Couch: Demetrius Cooper escaped Chicago, then waited his turn at MSU
EAST LANSING – When Demetrius Cooper talks about Chicago, he’s talking about a different city than many of us know.
You don’t go to Demetrius Cooper’s Chicago for a weekend getaway. If you’re smart, you get away. “It’s every child for themselves,” is how one of Cooper’s high school coaches described Cooper’s Chicago.
Cooper is an imposing figure, a 6-foot-5, 253-pound defensive end. A first-year Michigan State starter with NFL potential. None of that makes a lick of difference in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.
“My main thing is just to stay out of the way,” Cooper said. “That’s what I tell my brothers and sisters. Because the bullet doesn’t have a name. The bullet is going anywhere — innocent bystanders getting killed, little kids getting killed, older people getting killed. The main thing is just to stay out of the way.”
After years of dreaming and waiting — through injuries and teachers’ strikes and then Shillique Calhoun’s 47-year MSU career — it’s Cooper’s turn. That goes for tonight’s opener against Furman and, if healthy, the next two seasons.
“The biggest person I don’t want to let down is myself,” Cooper said. “I’ve got a lot of hype going around my name. It’s really time for me to bring it all out and show everybody what I can personally do on the field.
“Shilique always tells me, ‘It’s your time now.’”
Patience rewarded
As a player, the comparisons to Calhoun are natural. They were from the first time MSU’s coaches laid eyes on Cooper at the 2012 Sound Mind Sound Body camp in Southfield. He was long and lean, athletic and strong. Just like Calhoun at that age.
“When coach (Pat) Narduzzi and Coach D (Mark Dantonio) came up to me personally and talked to me and they saw me go through drills, as I was going through drills, I was watching them and their eyes. They were glued on me,” Cooper said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, this is the school that wants me.’ I looked at other schools’ coaches’ eyes and after they talked to me, they wouldn’t have their eyes on me. Michigan State had their eyes on me and me only.”
In the four years since, Cooper hasn't been quite so noticeable again. His senior year in high school was washed out by combination of transfer rules, a Chicago teachers’ strike and then a knee injury.
He’s seen action in 26 games at MSU, including one start last season, and has six sacks and 32 tackles, playing primarily behind Calhoun, Lawrence Thomas and Marcus Rush.
All of them have moved on. Other than Evan Jones, none of MSU’s defensive ends have played a down at the position in a Big Ten game. Cooper is MSU’s hope for a consistent pass rush from the edge. The comparisons to Calhoun still exist. So the hope is real.
“They’re very similar,” co-defensive coordinator Harlon Barnett said. “No disrespect to Shilique, but if I had to say one thing or the other, Coop may be a better run(-stopping) guy and Shilique might be a better pass(-rush) guy. Not that they’re both way off in either category, because Coop can get after the passer and Shilique could stop the run.
“He’s a good player, and this is his time, his time to step up and be a full-time guy.”
Those expectations aren't based solely on his talent. Cooper is one of those players whose teammates like talking about him. Actually, they just like him. They trust him.
- COUCH: Headstrong as ever, Malik McDowell again has his mind made up
- COUCH: Tyler O'Connor leans on advice from friend Andrew Maxwell
Cooper is quiet. Sometimes shy. Goofy with people he’s comfortable around.
“You can depend on Coop, is how I would put it,” senior captain and safety Demetrious Cox said when asked for how he would describe Cooper. “God willing he just stays healthy. That’s his thing, the knee injuries. He’s getting treated every day, he says his knee feels good. Hopefully he goes crazy, shows everybody what he can do.
“He’s a guy that’s always where he’s supposed to be, knowing what he’s supposed to do, on and off the field. You never hear about Demetrius Cooper giving anybody any problems.”
That wasn’t always the case.
A path corrected
When former Chicago Morgan Park High School defensive line coach Tristan Stovall first met Cooper as an eighth-grader, Cooper wasn’t headed toward college or even high school graduation.
“He was snatching purses, man,” Stovall said.
“One thing I can say about the parents, they gave me a shot to mentor, to put the things in him that were needed to get him to where he’s at now.”
Cooper doesn’t like to talk specifics about how close he came to being another Chicago statistic — there were 90 reported homicides and more than 400 people shot this August in Chicago; 17 have been killed this year in Cooper’s neighborhood alone.
But he knows he was on the wrong path.
“My mom, she kicked me out of the house a few times,” Cooper, 21, said. “When I left those doors and I realized there’s nothing else but these streets, I realized that’s not where I want to be.”
There is rarely one moment that changes the course of any young life. For Cooper, there were several, and one in particular early on, about the time he came into contact with Stovall.
Cooper had another person in his corner — his older brother, Steve Taylor Jr. Taylor was a basketball star at Chicago’s Simeon High School, a year ahead of Jabari Parker, two years older than Cooper.
“I sat him down, and we had a long talk on where we want to be in 10 years,” said Taylor, who played three seasons at Marquette University before transferring to Toledo, where he’ll finish his career this season. “Do we want to be still in Chicago, doing nothing? Or do we want to be somewhere successful?”
Taylor remembers being 15 at the time, Cooper 13.
“His friends he had around him and the company he had around him, I just felt that he wasn’t on the same agenda I was on,” Taylor said. “I told him, ‘We have to change our lives and pick a different group of friends to hang with, because the group of guys we’re hanging with right now, they’re not getting us to where we need to be. They’re not making us better.’”
Taylor and Cooper used to tell each other when they went anywhere in Chicago, “We’re gong to come back home together as one.”
“I always look up to him, whatever he tells me to do,” Cooper said.
Maturity is a process, though. As a sophomore at Morgan Park, Cooper began to look like a football star. He didn’t take his classwork nearly as seriously.
As a junior, Cooper had a 1.6 GPA and scored a 15 on his ACT. So he began taking night classes and advanced placement courses and “passing them with A’s.” He improved his ACT score.
He suffered his first knee injury that season — “That really scared him. That was a turning point,” his mother, Diana, said — and then transferred to follow Stovall and Morgan Park’s staff to Julian High School for his senior year.
Mid-American Conference schools showed interest late in his junior year. Then Iowa and MSU.
“Dan Roushar really believed in him,” Stovall said of MSU’s former offensive coordinator, who helped recruit Cooper and stuck with him.
MSU football preview: Columns, position analysis, predictions, etc.
If you talk to Cooper these days, you might find it hard to imagine any knucklehead behavior. His demeanor exudes the sense of responsibility he has to himself, to his teammates, to his mother and five siblings — Steve and, more importantly, his younger brothers Marquell, Rashad and Javonte and little sister Diana. Marquell is attending Triton, a community college in Chicago’s Northwest suburbs. Rashad, Javonte and Diana are still at home.
“I worry about my brothers every day,” Cooper said. “Because I know the type of family I have. I have younger brothers who love to be around a crowd, who love to go out there and express themselves. They love to go out to the park and play basketball all over the city. I worry about them all the time.”
Cooper’s dreams are not tied to football, he says, but to success, whatever that looks like. The stakes are high. Only so much is in his control.
“It’s an even better story because those two older brothers are sparking and keeping the academic interest of the younger ones,” Stovall said. “It’s a beautiful story. It’s a tough one. It’s lucky. But it’s happening.”
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.