Oklahoma did enough for co-defensive coordinator and cornerbacks coach Jay Valai to be able to resist a job at a different blue-blood program, but a chance in the NFL was just too irresistible for the Sooners to overcome.
Brent Venables now has a hole to fill on his loaded defensive staff with Valai set to head to the NFL to become the Buffalo Bills' defensive backs coach, according to CBS Sports' Matt Zenitz on Monday morning. Zenitz had initially reported on Sunday that the Bills were targeting Valai for the position, but things grew much more serious within 24 hours.
Jay Valai heads to NFL in new role with Buffalo Bills to create vacancy for Brent Venables
Just last week, Valai's name was connected to Notre Dame's secondary coach opening. The Fighting Irish also lost a valuable assistant to the NFL with Mike Mickens taking a job with the Baltimore Ravens.
The Sooners managed to keep Valai in Norman then, though, at least briefly, and it looked like Valai would stay put for 2026 after getting a new extension last week. Valai was one of multiple OU assistants to get a raise on Friday, with his salary getting bumped to $785,000 for 2026. However, there's no price on an NFL opportunity.
Valai is another piece to new Bills head coach Joe Brady's staff. That was the first domino to fall to get Valai to Buffalo, but the biggest was when Brady hired Jim Leonhard as his defensive coordinator. Leonhard was teammates with Valai at Wisconsin, where Valai was named Second-Team All-Big Ten twice as a defensive back and was a senior captain when the Badgers won the Big Ten championship in 2010 and played in the Rose Bowl.
After his playing days were over, Valai opened a sports performance training facility to train professional and high school athletes for six years before fully diving into coaching in 2016 as a defensive quality control coach at Georgia. He then picked up NFL experience while serving in the same role under Andy Reid for the Kansas City Chiefs in 2018.
Valai was then a cornerbacks coach at Rutgers, Texas and Alabama before being part of Venables' original staff at OU in 2022 and had been with the Sooners the past four seasons.
Now, Venables must fill the first vacancy of the offseason on his defensive staff after already firing tight ends coach Joe Jon Finley and replacing him with Jason Witten on the offensive side of the ball.