With a chip on his shoulder and 55 pounds gone, Cooper emerges as freshman starter for UM

Anez Cooper is big. It’s the first thing that stands out about the freshman, who’s now listed at 6-foot-5 and 350 pounds. It was one of the first things Mario Cristobal mentioned about him after he signed with the Miami Hurricanes in February and it was noteworthy enough for Joe Salave’a, who was as big as 6-3 and 317 pounds during his playing days, to greet Cooper by simply saying, “Whoa,” the first time he went to Alabama to recruit the offensive lineman.

It wasn’t long ago, though, that Cooper was even bigger — too big in the minds of most college coaches.

“He was 405,” Pleasant Grove coach Darrell LeBeaux said. “He didn’t know how big he was.”

From the spring before his senior season of high school to now, Cooper has dropped 55 pounds and replaced them with a chip on his shoulder. Frustration with the recruiting process — mostly a lack of interest from nearby Southeastern Conference schools, even as he shed dozens and dozens of pounds — helped fuel him to reach this unlikely point. In only his eighth game at Miami, Cooper, who wasn’t even a top 1,000 recruit in the 247Sports composite rankings for the Class of 2022, became the first freshman to start for the Hurricanes on Saturday in their 14-12, quadruple-overtime win against the Virginia Cavaliers.

Right guard has been a revolving door for Miami since offensive lineman Justice Oluwaseun went down with an injury last month, so there’s no guarantee he’ll be back in the lineup Saturday when the Hurricanes (4-4, 2-2 Atlantic Coast) host the rival Florida State Seminoles at 7:30 p.m. at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, but he has the makings for a long-term solution somewhere on the line after earning Cristobal’s trust in just a few months.

“It’s a little frustrating with some of the local schools that didn’t necessarily pull the trigger like they probably said they would and didn’t handle business the right way,” LeBeaux said, “but that’s neither here or there.”

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When he picked the Hurricanes on national signing day, Cooper only had about a dozen scholarship offers to choose and pretty much no one else was expressing major interest in the three-star tackle. With weight concerns, Cooper looked like a project and some college coaches, including Salave’a, envisioned him moving to defensive line, where his massive frame could be less of a concern if he became a dedicated run stuffer.

When Salave’a and Cristobal made their in-home visit with him in January, Cooper told them he wanted to play offensive line, though, and so Cristobal decided to give him a shot. So far, he has rewarded the coach. In his first start, Cooper “graded out in the high 80s,” Cristobal said.

“In his living room, he said, ‘I want to play right guard.’ Coach Salave’a was upset, [offensive line coach Alex] Mirabal was happy, and we went from there,” Cristobal said Monday. “He performed extremely well, played with a high motor, really didn’t have any mental mistakes. Off on some things technically, but the sky’s the limit.”

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For evidence, just look at his transformation in these last 18 months.

When the college interest wasn’t where anybody around Cooper thought it should be for the lineman, LeBeaux helped get a nutritionist for him near the end of his junior year. Cooper hadn’t been weighing himself regularly and was shocked to find out he weighed more than 400 pounds, LeBeaux said.

The biggest change was just with his diet. He started eating breakfast every day to improve his metabolism, and it helped him cut down on midday snacking. He also started eat healthier, cutting out junk food, and his bad weight started to melt away. There was a slight uptick in conditioning for Cooper, but LeBeaux never doubted he had the work ethic to get into the shape he needed.

His weight also never affected him too badly, either. In the summer before his senior year, Cooper went to Athens for a Georgia Bulldogs camp, weighed in at 389 pounds and still ran a 20-yard shuttle in about 5.3 seconds.

“Nobody could believe how big he was and being able to move so fast,” LeBeaux said. “He’s a freak athlete, but people have to come see him in person to realize, ‘Oh, this kid’s not fat. He’s not a fat kid. He’s just a big guy.’”

Cristobal trusted LeBeaux’s word at first — he had a relationship with the coach from LeBeaux’s time as an assistant coach at Shades Valley in Birmingham, Alabama, when Cristobal was recruiting Daron Payne there — and then believed the hype once he got to see him in person. Cooper was so impressive he contributed for the Hurricanes right, even though he wasn’t in Coral Gables for spring practice.

After debuting in Miami’s season-opening rout of the FCS Bethune-Cookman Wildcats in September, Cooper donned No. 37 in Week 2 and played as a jumbo-sized tight end — essentially a sixth offensive lineman — to help the Hurricanes beat the Southern Miss Golden Eagles.

He has already played in six games, making him one of Miami’s biggest freshman contributors — in the same realm as former four-star prospects like quarterback Jacurri Brown, tight end Jaleel Skinner, defensive lineman Nyjalik Kelly and linebacker Wesley Bissainthe — and he’s only scratching the surface of what he can be.

“He knew the pedigree of Coach Cristobal, of Coach Mirabal,” LeBeaux said. “He’s a smart kid. He did his research and understands who was recruiting him, and different things of that nature. That’s the thing that he wanted to do. He had an opportunity to be coached by Coach Mirabal and Coach Cristobal hands on.”