First a receiver, ‘well-rounded’ Alex Cook now listed as starting safety for UW Huskies
If you ask a football coach about Washington’s Alex Cook, you’ll quickly get used to hearing the word ‘and.’
Talented and hard-working.
Big and fast.
Explosive and physical
Offense and defense and special teams.
Joe Cattolico only coached Cook during his senior year at Sheldon High School in Sacramento, Calif., but it didn’t take him long to understand the kind of dynamic athlete he had on his roster. Cattolico was used to players’ strengths being separated by ‘ors’ not ‘ands.’ Cook defied that trend.
“I think he’s just a well-rounded athlete,” Cattolico said during a phone interview last week. “He did a bit of everything well for us. He caught the ball well. He ran well with the ball because we handed the ball to him quite a bit. He returned kicks. He was physical, both as a blocker and as a tackler. He was instinctive and had a nose for the ball on defense playing in the secondary.
“He was kind of one of those kids where he did everything well. There wasn’t something that you said, ‘Oh, that’s something that he needs to improve.’ He really had a broad skill base.”
Cook was a multidimensional star in high school. As a senior at Sheldon in 2016, he was named a first-team Sacramento Bee All-Metro defensive back. He also caught 26 passes for 609 yards and eight touchdowns while rushing for 269 yards and three touchdowns on 39 carries.
Cook eventually committed as a wide receiver. But when he visited UW, his first stop was the office of then-defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake.
“We knew he was a great player on the offensive side of the ball, but we recruited him as a DB first,” said Lake, who took over as head coach after the 2019 season. “And then he slipped through my fingers. The offensive side got him first. But ... I’m always recruiting. When I was on defense, obviously I was always looking at the offensive side of the ball saying, ‘Hey, we could use that.’”
So what did Lake see in Cook? An impressive athlete and a physical player who liked contact and a receiver with strong hands. Cook redshirted his freshman season before playing 12 games in 2018 and catching one pass for 26 yards. After that, Lake and former head coach Chris Petersen approached him about switching to safety.
“Since I was a freshman, I always enjoyed playing both sides of the ball,” Cook said during spring ball last season. “I was in a predicament where I didn’t know which side of the ball I wanted to play on. When Coach Petersen and Coach Lake offered the opportunity to play safety, I was all for it.”
During those spring practices, Petersen described Cook as being “like a true freshman” when it came to learning the Huskies’ safety techniques.
Cook appeared in all 13 games during the 2019 season, mostly on special teams. But when UW released its depth chart ahead of the scheduled 2020 season opener against Cal — it was canceled after a Golden Bears’ player tested positive for COVID-19 — Cook was listed as a starting safety alongside Asa Turner.
“Since (2020) training camp began, he’s been out there making plays,” Lake said. “He’s put a lot of work in, he’s learned the defense and now he’s just accelerating.”
Turner and Cameron Williams both started games as true freshman safeties last season. With a spot open after Myles Bryant’s departure, many assumed the duo would top UW’s two-deep. But it was Cook who appeared instead.
“(Cook’s) put in a lot of hard work on the field, in the meeting rooms, extra meetings with (defensive backs coach Will) Harris and (assistant Terrence) Brown,” said UW defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski. “He bought into it from day one. It’s been steady progress.
“The way he attacked camp this year, he looked comfortable out there and with that came the confidence. He earned everything he got from how he went about his business learning the defense and playing fast, playing physical and executing at a high level.”
Cattolico believed Cook was capable of playing either offense or defense at the college level, and now he’s done both. His dedication, Cattolico said, got him there as much as his athletic ability. It took just one season for Cattolico to learn that much.
Cook had already chosen the Huskies when Cattolico arrived at Sheldon, but that didn’t lessen his commitment to the team’s success. Sheldon finished 8-4 and advanced to the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Division I playoff quarterfinals in 2016. Cook excelled at so much, Cattolico said, that it sometimes seemed like he could win games on his own.
Even a substantial ankle injury couldn’t stop Cook. He wasn’t 100% for the playoffs, but he still hobbled onto the field to play.
“It kind of really to me spoke volumes to what kind of a kid he is and … how important the success of his teammates and his friends and the team and everything else was to him,’’ Cattolico said. “He was a kid who had every reason kind of to mail it in at that point and isn’t cut from that kind of cloth. He’s cut from a different kind of cloth.”
