Oklahoma football: Jay Valai gives Sooners a big secondary boost
By Chip Rouse
For the better half of the past decade, the Oklahoma football defense has been the victim of too many home-run plays on the back end of the defense.
That is likely to improve fairly quickly in the coming seasons with Brent Venables, whose defensive prowess has been on full display the past decade at Clemson and before that under Bob Stoops at Oklahoma. Venables has assembled a highly regarded group of defensive assistants.
One of the new defensive assistants expected to make a big difference, and sooner rather than later, is Jay Valai (pronounced vuh-LIE), who was brought in by Venables as co-defensive coordinator, specifically to address pass defense and work with the cornerbacks and nickelbacks.
In the 2018 season, Oklahoma finished dead last in the FBS (130th out of 130 teams) in pass defense. Under new defensive coordinator Alex Grinch and cornerbacks coach Roy Manning, the Sooners improved to 58th in the country in pass defense the following season before dropping back to 82nd and 109th in 2020 and 2021, respectively.
Valai’s last assignment was on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama this past season coaching the Crimson Tide cornerbacks. A second-team All-Big Ten defensive back at Wisconsin, Valai began his coaching career as a defensive quality control assistant at Georgia in 2016-2017. He moved to the NFL in 2018, serving in the same role for the Kansas City Chiefs. He returned to the college ranks in 2019 as the cornerbacks coach at Rutgers, and he’s been on a fast track upward ever since.
He was hired by Texas under Tom Herman in 2020 to coach the cornerbacks, and he joined Saban at Alabama the following season.
“Jay is one of the up-and-coming coaches in college football,” Venables said earlier this month in announcing the hiring of Valai. “He brings a tremendous amount of passion and energy to the job as well as a real love for the game and for relationship-building. He has gained terrific coaching experience on the NFL and college levels.”
Valai is from Euless, Texas, and should bring a strong Texas recruiting connection with him to the Oklahoma football program.
His recruiting presence is already being felt at OU. Valai had a big hand in the Sooners getting the commitments of three defensive back transfers in the past couple of weeks (C.J. Coldon from Wyoming, Trey Morrison from North Carolina and Kani Walker from Louisville).