How WSU’s Cooper Mathers went from walk-on linebacker to record-breaking tight end

PULLMAN – Cooper Mathers is still blinking himself awake when he strolls into the Washington State interview room. It’s about 12:20 p.m. on Thursday , and after the No. 19 Cougars wrapped up another morning practice, preparing for what figures to be a challenging road test against New Mexico this weekend, Mathers needed a nap.

So he did what many of his teammates do: He headed to the locker room, found an air mattress near his cubby and got some shut-eye. For the Cougars, it’s much more efficient than heading home for a nap and returning to campus for class, so they turn off the lights in the locker room and turn it into a relaxing zone for players who need some rest.

With his dark-brown hair a tad ruffled and holding a black thermos, Mathers smiles as he walks into the adjacent interview room, laughing about how he had forgotten to set an alarm. He’s wearing a gray T-shirt and black sweatpants. He speaks softly, making it easy to forget that earlier this season, he set the single-season touchdown record for tight ends at WSU with his fifth score.

In that way and many more, Mathers is a revelation for Washington State, capitalizing on coach Jake Dickert’s decision to bring the position back from the Cougars’ graveyard. Under former coaches Mike Leach and Nick Rolovich, WSU went about a decade without using tight ends, opting to implement more skill positions in their Air Raid offenses. Check out the Cougars’ rosters from those years, 2012-2021, and you won’t find a single tight end.

So in 2020, when Mathers accepted a preferred walk-on spot at WSU, he did so as a linebacker. That’s the position he played as a high school senior, at Seattle powerhouse O’Dea, eschewing his role as a receiver to get on the field more. He collected only a handful of catches as a junior in the Fighting Irish’s run-heavy scheme, and if he wanted to catch on with a college, he knew he had to make a bigger impact.

Except by the time his senior season rolled around, Mathers didn’t exactly have his choice of schools. He had drawn the interest of a few Division III programs, including Whitworth University, but none of the caliber he envisioned for himself. He completed his senior season, which ended with a loss in the state championship game, without a college home.

To this day, he’s still unsure about how the Cougars’ coaching staff found out about him, but after his senior season, Mathers got a call from WSU special teams coordinator Michael Ghobrial. He had a question for Mathers: Would he be interested in a PWO spot in Pullman? Inside, Mathers knew the answer — a resounding yes — but he had to get the green light from his father, Jack, who only let his son start playing football on the recommendation of a family friend when Cooper was in the eighth grade.

Mathers told Ghobrial he would call him right back. He had to consult Jack, who gave Cooper his blessing. With that in hand, Mathers told Ghobrial he was ready to take a risk, heading to Pullman without a scholarship, playing a position he had only picked up the season prior, figuring he would make the biggest splash wherever he could fit in.

“I was thinking I’d be happy if I was playing special teams by the end of my career,” Mathers said. “It kind of changed as you go. You just keep trying to climb up the ladder, and it ended up working out a little better.”

Mathers made the switch from linebacker to tight end during WSU’s 2022 spring ball, a few months after Dickert went from interim head coach to full-time head honcho. Dickert was the one who approached Mathers about the change, but even if he didn’t, Mathers would have bugged him about it.

“I was going against all these defensive guys, and they were telling me I should play tight end like the older guys I looked up to, so I was thinking about it a lot at the end of the season,” Mathers said.

What really paved the way for Mathers to make the change, though, was Dickert’s approach. In December 2021, when WSU introduced Dickert as the team’s next head coach with an introductory news conference, Dickert fielded a question from former head coach Jim Walden:

Is there any chance we see a tight end at Washington State again?

“And at that time, I couldn’t say anything, but hell yeah, we are,” Dickert said. “Just from a defensive lens, that position creates complexity in offenses. Creates diversity, creates physicality, and Coop’s done a good job of bringing that.”

Of his six touchdown catches this season, Mathers’ favorite is his 9-yard catch in a blowout win over Hawaii last month. The Cougars were ahead 7-3 midway through the second quarter. On second-and-goal, Mathers jumped out of his stance, sprinted forward, cut to his left and away from a Hawaii defender, then reached his arms out to catch quarterback John Mateer’s pass, hanging on as he fell to the turf in the back of the end zone.

It was the kind of play WSU has usually only asked of its receivers, of Gabe Marks and Easop Winston and Calvin Jackson. All of the sudden, the Cougars weren’t just throwing to tight ends every now and then. They’re trusting them to make diving catches for touchdowns, a development backward from everything Leach installed .

With that, Mathers secured his fifth touchdown catch of the season, surpassing former WSU star Chris Leighton for single-season scoring receptions by a tight end in program history.

With seven touchdown catches for his career, Mathers is one short of the WSU record, held by Troy Binneman, who played from 2001-2005. Its meaning is hardly lost on Mathers — it’s just a little harder for him to appreciate as WSU gets ready to put its 8-1 record on the line this weekend against a tricky New Mexico club.

“It’s obviously a pretty cool thing to do,” Mathers said. “Keep on pushing it for the tight ends. Get as many as we can. It doesn’t really mean anything crazy, but it’s cool.”

Mathers has used his athleticism and soft hands to adjust to the position seamlessly. His best display might have come in late September, in WSU’s 54-52 double-overtime win over San Jose State, when he hauled in a last-second flip from Mateer near the goal line.

On that play, a go-ahead score, Mateer rolled to his left and feigned a surge toward the end zone. That drew two defenders toward Mateer and away from Mathers, so Mateer tossed a shovel pass to Mathers, who had to reach his arms up and snag the ball, keeping both feet in bounds.

In the Cougars’ fourth game of the season, Mathers had made his first catch of the season.

“That one was probably the biggest in getting me more involved,” Mathers said, “because at the time, I think I had no catches in the first three games. So getting that first one, then I felt like we really started calling some plays where I was a lot more utilized in the red zone. We had all those plays, and we’d call some of them, too. But I feel like you’ve got to make a play to develop some more trust. And then once you make that play, they’re like, ‘All right, we see you can do this. Now we’re going to call them more.’ So I’ve gotten more opportunities basically every game.”

Mathers hasn’t done much more than catch touchdowns and earn trust from Mateer and Ben Arbuckle, WSU’s offensive coordinator. Of his 10 receptions, six have gone for touchdowns, underscoring how much the Cougs trust him when it matters most. It also speaks to Mathers’ versatility, using his relatively undersized 6-foot-2 frame to blend a tight end’s blocking responsibilities with the catching savvy he’s had all along.

If there’s one that pleased the people he loves most, though, it came in WSU’s 29-26 road win over San Diego State on Oct. 26. Early in the first quarter, the Cougs ran a flea flicker that went from Mateer to running back Leo Pulalasi to receiver Kris Hutson, back to Mateer, who lofted the ball downfield to a wide-open Mathers, who waltzed into the end zone untouched.

Then he unsheathed the celebration he had been planning. In the weeks leading up to this game, Mathers had heard from his sisters, Murphie and Hailey, and dad Jack, that he needed to improve his celebrations. OK, Mathers responded, well then give me some ideas.

“So then we decided as a group,” Mathers said. “The ‘Stanky Leg.’ ”

With that, Mathers dropped the ball and went into his routine, crouching a tad and wiggling his right leg around while receiver Carlos Hernandez hyped him up from behind. After the fact, Mathers laughed at the photos of the celebration because it was clear Hernandez wasn’t in on the celebration plan — “It didn’t look good,” Mathers chuckled — but the points counted all the same.

After the game, Mathers got approval from Murphie and Hailey. Jack, however, offered him one message: “Don’t do that again.”

Like with taking naps in the locker room, though, you earn a little leeway when you break records. Mathers is having no trouble doing either.