Anthony Cook out of transfer portal, back with Texas football

The Texas football program is set to get some help back in the secondary with the return of rising junior defensive back Anthony Cook.

The tumultuous 2020 offseason that brought so many twists and turns for the Texas football program only continued on July 29. And news that surprised some, but not all that many in the end, dropped when a report from Inside Texas surfaced saying that rising junior Longhorns defensive back Anthony Cook would withdraw his name from the NCAA Transfer Portal.

This is huge news for the Longhorns since the depth in the defensive backfield was really starting to thin out of late. Texas did lose rising redshirt junior cornerback Kobe Boyce, not due to the transfer portal, but due to retirement from football due to mental health issues and depression. They also lost rising redshirt senior cornerback Donovan Duvernay to the portal earlier in the offseason.

With Texas getting Cook back on campus, Texas is now down to just two defensive back losses to either the transfer portal or straight up retirement so far this offseason. And losing Duvernay and Boyce for various reasons is something that won’t hamper the Longhorns defensive backfield all too much.

This also now makes it two names that were significant to the Texas defense that put their names in the transfer portal that would wind up landing back on the Forty Acres later in the offseason. By all accounts, rising junior linebacker and former JUCO transfer Juwan Mitchell is back with the team in the midst of mandatory summer workouts.

And now that Cook is back with the team too, head coach Tom Herman and recently hired defensive coordinator Chris Ash can sleep a bit easier with the defensive depth shored up. Cook was projected to be a significant piece to the Texas secondary, and he can return to that role once again soon entering the 2020 season.

What Cook is now bringing back for the Longhorns is 42 career total tackles, two tackles for loss, one sack, three pass deflections, and one forced fumble. His production was pretty cleanly split between his freshman and sophomore campaigns too.

Coming out of Lamar High School in Houston, TX, Cook ranked as the nation’s No. 64 2018 high school prospect, No. 10 cornerback, and No. 7 prospect out of Texas (247Sports Composite). He was one of the bigger parts of the 2018 Texas recruiting class, and should be a big part of the secondary once again this fall.