Completed Event: Football at Fordham on October 18, 2025 , Win , 30, to, 13
Final
Football
at Fordham
30
13
Defensive end Shane Cokes
Photo by: Doug Austin
Shane Cokes: Becoming the Best He Can Be
9/29/2022 10:30:00 AM | Football
The maturation of Shane Cokes from disgruntled freshman to team captain has him eyeing NFL dreams
College coaches are almost always guarded when asked to compare one of their old teams to another. Or a great player from one era to a great player from another.
That's why the unsolicited comparison Dartmouth defensive line coach Duane Brooks made between senior Shane Cokes and great players he's worked with was a surprise.
"I tell him all the time," the veteran coach offered, "if you play like I think you can play this year, you will be the best player I've ever coached."
Those are big words.
Brooks was on staff at Yale for 15 years and has been at Dartmouth for the last nine. Along the way he has mentored players like Bulldogs' standout Adam Hernandez, who would sign with the Baltimore Ravens, like the Big Green's Niko Lalos '20, who spent a couple of years with the New York Giants, and like A.J. Zuttah '16 and Jackson Perry '19, both selected twice to the All-Ivy League first team.
But Brooks is a sly one. He didn't tell Cokes he's better than Lalos et al., but rather that he will be if he plays the way the coach believes he can.
Like better coaches everywhere, Brooks is part psychologist, and his message to Cokes is just another of the mind games he's played over four years trying to unlock the defensive end's enormous potential.
"He is a combination of every player I've had that's really good," said Brooks. "He's 6-foot-4-ish. He's 275 pounds. He is as strong as strong can be. And he's faster than he looks because he's a long strider who has big feet. You walk by him and it's, 'Ooh, he's a big dude,' right? I mean, he's all the guys I've had here, and all the guys I've had at Yale in one. He's those guys combined."
Shane Cokes was a star at Chaminade-Julienne Catholic in Dayton, Ohio. In addition to Harvard, Yale and few other Ivies, he was being courted as a high schooler by MAC schools. Several Big Ten schools were flirting with him as well, and that's the direction he was leaning.
"Coach (Keith) Clark was my area recruiter, and when he said, 'You have an offer from Dartmouth,' I was like, 'OK, thank you. I appreciate it,'" said Cokes. "And then I went right back to focusing on bigger schools."
When a coaching change and a last-minute decision to offer to another player instead of him took a potential Big Ten offer off the table, Cokes called an audible.
"I decided like, OK, if I'm going to go to one of these smaller schools, I might as well get as good an education as I can," he said. "(Former Dartmouth assistant Cheston) Blackshear came to my school, and I liked what he had to say. Dartmouth was my favorite of all the schools I talked to, so we decided to take a visit there."
Brooks felt confident Dartmouth was in good position to land the promising first-team, all-state Division III pick when he learned the Cokes were packing up the family car and heading this way. "People don't drive 13 hours one way if they're not coming," he said.
Maybe, maybe not.
"My dad loves driving and we don't really fly," Cokes explained. "We got up here in a snowstorm. That's fun on a visit. I enjoyed the visit, enjoyed the team. It was different from the perception I had of the Ivy League. It was definitely better than I thought.
"I enjoyed the team and the coaches, including Coach Brooks, and that's what helped me make my decision."
His opinion of Brooks would change dramatically.
"I came in as I always have wherever I played, expecting to play, wanting to play from the jump," he said. "That was my goal. That was my plan all preseason and that didn't come to fruition.
"Throughout the season I was working hard for a chance to play and make the bus. I was watching film every day after practice and after class, and I still wasn't playing. I was just angry because I felt like I was ready and could help the team."
Now the truth can be told. It was all part of Brooks' plan.
"We had guys like Jackson Perry, Niko Lalos and David Chalmers," the coach said. "Those guys were pretty good players. Shane thought he was better. He might have been athletically, but he wasn't ready.
"I purposely didn't travel him and then at every home game I'd play him the last two minutes. He didn't talk to me for a year because he thought he should be playing."
Whether it was his unhappiness in the sport that caused it he's not sure, but Cokes didn't enjoy his first fall at Dartmouth any more than he did his first fall in a Big Green uniform.
"I did not like it very much, being honest," he said. "I think during the winter I kind of maybe liked it a little more I would say, just like taking that break from the season."
His opinion about Dartmouth and his position coach would change after the year lost to the pandemic.
"I think that COVID and then junior year really kind of helped me understand what makes this place so special," he said. "Just being away from football especially hurt a lot. Coming back to football and my friends junior year, I just really fell in love with it. I enjoyed it. It's definitely grown on me a lot."
It didn't hurt that after a year away from football he burst on the scene last fall, registering 5.5 sacks among his 37 tackles and earning a spot on the All-Ivy League Second Team.
The turning point, both the defensive line coach and the defensive lineman believe, was the win at New Hampshire.
"That was week five and I had been struggling a little bit," Cokes said. "Coach Brooks was really getting on me that game. I had to get after myself and understand, 'OK, you've got to play now. It's serious.' I definitely picked up after that, especially the Harvard game, and then the Princeton game."
Perhaps the key to the New Hampshire game was the realization Brooks had that Cokes' time to be turned loose had arrived. Not just on the field but also from him.
Recalled Brooks, a former lineman himself, "It was kind of like, 'You know what? Tell that fat guy with all the hair who is coaching you to stop and leave you alone.' So then I just left him alone, and you've seen what he's done since.
"He didn't like me for a year or two and probably still doesn't. But it helped in his development."
Almost reluctantly Cokes will now concede the psychologist/coach he's grown to appreciate might have had the right idea.
"Obviously, we had Jackson Perry and Niko and all of them, but I still felt like I could have played and helped out," he said. "But growing and being older now, you kind of realize, OK, it was probably a good decision I had to wait. I did have those guys in front of me. But I think that mentality helped me back then, and it helps me now."
With All-Ivy now after his name, Cokes was voted a Dartmouth captain at the end of spring practice. For a player who wouldn't say boo when he first joined the team, that's a sign of how far he's come not just as a player, but as a person. That hasn't gone unnoticed.
"I was talking to him the other day and I said something about how he wouldn't ever say anything," Robert L. Blackman Head Football Coach Buddy Teevens said with a laugh. "He was just so shy. And now you see him and he's a guy that we go to.
"I really compliment Duane Brooks and the guys in our program. I think we develop men as well as football players. He's a wonderful example. He's obviously a very talented and gifted athlete, and Brooksie has done a great job with him in terms both of developing his skillset and his self-confidence as a leader."
"When you are a captain, you can't just lead by example anymore," he said. "When you see things going wrong, you have to speak up. When you see things aren't going right, you have to tell them, 'OK, this is how we do things.' It's a tradition that has been built here, and we have to keep it going for the next guys."
Brooks couldn't be more proud of how his student has blossomed.
"It's funny," he said. "I told him, 'When they said you were a captain all of a sudden your voice got deep.' He talks different now. He walks different. He used to be almost meek. Now he knows he's a guy and he stands up for himself and stands up for people."
Cokes did an internship in wealth management at Citibank over the summer and the government major with minors in philosophy and digital arts said he learned a lot and enjoyed the experience.
"But it just helped me love football even more," he said.
Not surprisingly, before he gets into investment banking or some other desk job, he has another dream.
"The NFL has always been the goal, since I was a little kid," he said. "That's plan 'A,' and has been for as long as I can remember."
Teevens thinks it is realistic. "He's a tough guy who is tough to block," he said. "It's been fun seeing the total development and maturation of a very gifted individual.
"The sky is the limit for him."
Brooks thinks Cokes will get the chance.
"He is a destroyer of the line of scrimmage," the coach said. "He's 100 times better than last year and he was pretty good last year. I've told him he can be a great one like (former Princeton standout and NFL player) Caraun Reid, but even better if he's as good as I think he can be.
"I talked with (former Dartmouth defensive lineman) Seth Simmer '20 the other day. I said to him, 'Guess what? Shane is now the man.' He goes, 'Coach, I could have told you as a freshman he was the guy.'"
"It's going to be a shame if he doesn't get drafted and he should be if he has the year I think he is going to have. I told him, 'Don't make a liar out of me.'"
That's why the unsolicited comparison Dartmouth defensive line coach Duane Brooks made between senior Shane Cokes and great players he's worked with was a surprise.
"I tell him all the time," the veteran coach offered, "if you play like I think you can play this year, you will be the best player I've ever coached."
Those are big words.
Brooks was on staff at Yale for 15 years and has been at Dartmouth for the last nine. Along the way he has mentored players like Bulldogs' standout Adam Hernandez, who would sign with the Baltimore Ravens, like the Big Green's Niko Lalos '20, who spent a couple of years with the New York Giants, and like A.J. Zuttah '16 and Jackson Perry '19, both selected twice to the All-Ivy League first team.
But Brooks is a sly one. He didn't tell Cokes he's better than Lalos et al., but rather that he will be if he plays the way the coach believes he can.
Like better coaches everywhere, Brooks is part psychologist, and his message to Cokes is just another of the mind games he's played over four years trying to unlock the defensive end's enormous potential.
"He is a combination of every player I've had that's really good," said Brooks. "He's 6-foot-4-ish. He's 275 pounds. He is as strong as strong can be. And he's faster than he looks because he's a long strider who has big feet. You walk by him and it's, 'Ooh, he's a big dude,' right? I mean, he's all the guys I've had here, and all the guys I've had at Yale in one. He's those guys combined."
• • • • •
Shane Cokes was a star at Chaminade-Julienne Catholic in Dayton, Ohio. In addition to Harvard, Yale and few other Ivies, he was being courted as a high schooler by MAC schools. Several Big Ten schools were flirting with him as well, and that's the direction he was leaning.
"Coach (Keith) Clark was my area recruiter, and when he said, 'You have an offer from Dartmouth,' I was like, 'OK, thank you. I appreciate it,'" said Cokes. "And then I went right back to focusing on bigger schools."
When a coaching change and a last-minute decision to offer to another player instead of him took a potential Big Ten offer off the table, Cokes called an audible.
"I decided like, OK, if I'm going to go to one of these smaller schools, I might as well get as good an education as I can," he said. "(Former Dartmouth assistant Cheston) Blackshear came to my school, and I liked what he had to say. Dartmouth was my favorite of all the schools I talked to, so we decided to take a visit there."
Brooks felt confident Dartmouth was in good position to land the promising first-team, all-state Division III pick when he learned the Cokes were packing up the family car and heading this way. "People don't drive 13 hours one way if they're not coming," he said.
Maybe, maybe not.
"My dad loves driving and we don't really fly," Cokes explained. "We got up here in a snowstorm. That's fun on a visit. I enjoyed the visit, enjoyed the team. It was different from the perception I had of the Ivy League. It was definitely better than I thought.
"I enjoyed the team and the coaches, including Coach Brooks, and that's what helped me make my decision."
His opinion of Brooks would change dramatically.
As a talented athlete who had been courted by the Big Ten and offered by the academies and MAC schools, Cokes arrived on campus as a freshman confident he was ready to be a factor in the Ivy League at the outset..@ShaneCokes brings down the QB on 2nd down and a nice tackle from @herring_tyron in front of the sticks gets Dartmouth the ball back!#TheWoods pic.twitter.com/reUTGYhZyX
— Dartmouth Football (@DartmouthFTBL) September 24, 2022
"I came in as I always have wherever I played, expecting to play, wanting to play from the jump," he said. "That was my goal. That was my plan all preseason and that didn't come to fruition.
"Throughout the season I was working hard for a chance to play and make the bus. I was watching film every day after practice and after class, and I still wasn't playing. I was just angry because I felt like I was ready and could help the team."
Now the truth can be told. It was all part of Brooks' plan.
"We had guys like Jackson Perry, Niko Lalos and David Chalmers," the coach said. "Those guys were pretty good players. Shane thought he was better. He might have been athletically, but he wasn't ready.
"I purposely didn't travel him and then at every home game I'd play him the last two minutes. He didn't talk to me for a year because he thought he should be playing."
Whether it was his unhappiness in the sport that caused it he's not sure, but Cokes didn't enjoy his first fall at Dartmouth any more than he did his first fall in a Big Green uniform.
"I did not like it very much, being honest," he said. "I think during the winter I kind of maybe liked it a little more I would say, just like taking that break from the season."
His opinion about Dartmouth and his position coach would change after the year lost to the pandemic.
"I think that COVID and then junior year really kind of helped me understand what makes this place so special," he said. "Just being away from football especially hurt a lot. Coming back to football and my friends junior year, I just really fell in love with it. I enjoyed it. It's definitely grown on me a lot."
It didn't hurt that after a year away from football he burst on the scene last fall, registering 5.5 sacks among his 37 tackles and earning a spot on the All-Ivy League Second Team.
The turning point, both the defensive line coach and the defensive lineman believe, was the win at New Hampshire.
"That was week five and I had been struggling a little bit," Cokes said. "Coach Brooks was really getting on me that game. I had to get after myself and understand, 'OK, you've got to play now. It's serious.' I definitely picked up after that, especially the Harvard game, and then the Princeton game."
Perhaps the key to the New Hampshire game was the realization Brooks had that Cokes' time to be turned loose had arrived. Not just on the field but also from him.
Recalled Brooks, a former lineman himself, "It was kind of like, 'You know what? Tell that fat guy with all the hair who is coaching you to stop and leave you alone.' So then I just left him alone, and you've seen what he's done since.
"He didn't like me for a year or two and probably still doesn't. But it helped in his development."
Almost reluctantly Cokes will now concede the psychologist/coach he's grown to appreciate might have had the right idea.
"Obviously, we had Jackson Perry and Niko and all of them, but I still felt like I could have played and helped out," he said. "But growing and being older now, you kind of realize, OK, it was probably a good decision I had to wait. I did have those guys in front of me. But I think that mentality helped me back then, and it helps me now."
With All-Ivy now after his name, Cokes was voted a Dartmouth captain at the end of spring practice. For a player who wouldn't say boo when he first joined the team, that's a sign of how far he's come not just as a player, but as a person. That hasn't gone unnoticed.
"I was talking to him the other day and I said something about how he wouldn't ever say anything," Robert L. Blackman Head Football Coach Buddy Teevens said with a laugh. "He was just so shy. And now you see him and he's a guy that we go to.
"I really compliment Duane Brooks and the guys in our program. I think we develop men as well as football players. He's a wonderful example. He's obviously a very talented and gifted athlete, and Brooksie has done a great job with him in terms both of developing his skillset and his self-confidence as a leader."
Well-spoken and direct, the once-shy Cokes looks a questioner in the eye when speaking.🌲 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗢 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗪𝗢𝗢𝗗𝗦 🌲
— Dartmouth Football (@DartmouthFTBL) September 3, 2022
🎙: Captain DL Shane Cokes (@ShaneCokes)#TheWoods pic.twitter.com/WtTsepZhlq
"When you are a captain, you can't just lead by example anymore," he said. "When you see things going wrong, you have to speak up. When you see things aren't going right, you have to tell them, 'OK, this is how we do things.' It's a tradition that has been built here, and we have to keep it going for the next guys."
Brooks couldn't be more proud of how his student has blossomed.
"It's funny," he said. "I told him, 'When they said you were a captain all of a sudden your voice got deep.' He talks different now. He walks different. He used to be almost meek. Now he knows he's a guy and he stands up for himself and stands up for people."
Cokes did an internship in wealth management at Citibank over the summer and the government major with minors in philosophy and digital arts said he learned a lot and enjoyed the experience.
"But it just helped me love football even more," he said.
Not surprisingly, before he gets into investment banking or some other desk job, he has another dream.
"The NFL has always been the goal, since I was a little kid," he said. "That's plan 'A,' and has been for as long as I can remember."
Teevens thinks it is realistic. "He's a tough guy who is tough to block," he said. "It's been fun seeing the total development and maturation of a very gifted individual.
"The sky is the limit for him."
Brooks thinks Cokes will get the chance.
"He is a destroyer of the line of scrimmage," the coach said. "He's 100 times better than last year and he was pretty good last year. I've told him he can be a great one like (former Princeton standout and NFL player) Caraun Reid, but even better if he's as good as I think he can be.
"I talked with (former Dartmouth defensive lineman) Seth Simmer '20 the other day. I said to him, 'Guess what? Shane is now the man.' He goes, 'Coach, I could have told you as a freshman he was the guy.'"
"It's going to be a shame if he doesn't get drafted and he should be if he has the year I think he is going to have. I told him, 'Don't make a liar out of me.'"
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