Michael Coats has taken a unique path to where he currently finds himself.
The transfer cornerback emerged as one of the top options in the market after a season at Nevada where he was a first-team all-Mountain West selection in 2024 after recording 41 tackles, 17 passes defended, and 4 interceptions while charting elite coverage grades.
But he almost didn’t play college football at all.
The Mississippi native started playing the game in Little League, but as he got older gravitated more towards basketball and baseball. He quit playing sports altogether in tenth grade and after graduation spent a season working at an arcade for a year. That’s when he came across a flyer for walk-on tryouts at East Central C.C.
Coats often played 7-on-7 with his friends and decided that he didn’t have anything to lose so he decided to attend the tryout and earned a spot as a walk-on with the team.
“I never played cornerback in my life, but I always watched football, and I always loved watching the cornerbacks and receivers go at it. That position was just natural because in basketball I was a good defensive player so it’s really the same mechanics when you translate it over,” he said.
The rest is history.
Coats arrived in fall camp and earned a starting spot on the team and has essentially started since. After appearing in 21 games at East Central, he transferred to Nevada where he recorded 13 tackles and an interception in his first season before breaking out in his second.
The game started to slow down for him and Coats credits the coaching he received during his time with the Wolfpack as a big reason why he made a significant jump.
“Now the game is starting to slow down just by naturally playing all the time. You can be told something, but you’ve just got to naturally learn it,” he said.
While he was originally contemplating his future in regard to the NFL Draft, the ruling on junior college players gave him the chance to spend another season in college. That’s when he elected to enter his name into the transfer portal and heard from a long list of schools including West Virginia, Mississippi, Texas Tech, Baylor, Virginia Tech, Mississippi State, and Houston. It was a different experience for the reserved Coats.
“I’m a different type of guy I don’t like the attention,” he said.
Coats took an official visit to West Virginia and was highly impressed with the entire package. From the facilities, to the atmosphere, to the town, and the message from the coaching staff it checked all his boxes in what he wanted to find in a college football program.
After meeting with head coach Rich Rodriguez, defensive coordinator Zac Alley and cornerbacks coach Rod West, Coats had decided that he wanted to spend next season in Morgantown.
“It felt comfortable to me,” he said.
Coats believes that he is a good fit for the West Virginia defense as the coaching staff liked his ability to play press-man coverage and his versatility to move around the defense. West Virginia saw an athlete who was quick and twitchy with elite ball production and Coats saw an opportunity.
The terminology in the defense wasn’t all that different from what he did at Nevada, and he was impressed with the disguised coverages that Alley utilizes.
Coats is already enrolled at West Virginia but plans to report today in order to get the next chapter of his story started in Morgantown. He is excited to get to know his new teammates and prove himself once again at the power four level in the Big 12 Conference.
“I love the challenge. I’m going in with a new slate and everything I did in the past doesn’t really matter anymore so I’m excited for that part of the challenge and show that I’m still that guy,” he said.
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