Florida State’s coaching shakeup reached the defensive backfield on Sunday, with safeties coach Evan Cooper also dismissed from the staff.
Noles247’s Kolby Crawford observed Cooper leaving the football-only facility abruptly around the team meeting in which Florida State announced a change in football leadership and fired head coach Mike Norvell. Florida State has not officially confirmed Cooper’s dismissal.
Defensive coordinator Tony White was also dismissed during the same timeframe.
Cooper arrived in Tallahassee with White ahead of the 2025 season and was officially hired on Dec. 7, 2024. The Miami native came to Florida State after spending the 2023 season at Nebraska.
His exit comes amid a 3-5 season for the Seminoles.
Florida State’s defense has been one of the nation’s worst in multiple categories this year, with the unit giving up explosive plays, struggling to get off the field and regularly being overmatched by opposing offenses.
Still, Cooper’s first season with the Seminoles produced some notable results in the secondary. Florida State ranked second in the ACC and among the nation’s top 30 in passing yards allowed, giving up 190.8 yards per game. The Seminoles held seven opponents under 200 passing yards and finished the season with three straight games allowing fewer than 200 yards through the air.
His safeties accounted for seven interceptions, led by second-team All-ACC selection Earl Little Jr., who had four. Edwin Joseph added three. Little also paced FSU with 76 tackles, four interceptions and two forced fumbles, and he was one of two ACC players to post at least 75 tackles and four interceptions that season.
Little, Joseph and Ashlynd Barker all made their first career starts under Cooper in his first game at Florida State, a 31-17 win over No. 8 Alabama. Barker ended up second on the team with 48 tackles and had 3.5 sacks, the third-most by an FSU defensive back over the previous 20 seasons.
Florida State was one of nine teams nationally with at least three players who recorded three interceptions. Little’s four picks were the most by a Seminole since 2021, and his three-game interception streak was the longest at Florida State since 2016.
Before his time at Florida State and Nebraska, Cooper worked for the Carolina Panthers as cornerbacks coach and director of player evaluation from 2020-22. He also held coaching roles at Baylor, Temple and Miami.
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Florida States Reset Just Got Even More Painful After Norvell
Florida States coaching reset picked up another jolt this week as the program moved on from defensive coordinator Tony White and safeties coach Evan Cooper in the wake of Mike Norvells dismissal. The changes are part of a broader overhaul after a frustrating 2026 season that has kept the Seminoles searching for answers, with the recent loss to Clemson only adding to the sense that the slide had become too much to ignore.
Rick Stockstill will guide the team as interim head coach for the rest of the season, but the bigger story is how quickly the staff has been stripped down around him. For a program trying to steady itself after a run of losses, the departures on defense only deepen the uncertainty and leave more questions about what the Seminoles will look like once the season finally ends. [Read more 🡒]
Mike Norvell Sounds Off On What Cost FSU Against Clemson
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For Florida State, the bigger concern is that the issues Norvell identified are the ones that tend to linger if they are not corrected quickly. He also touched on injuries, individual performances and the teams mindset moving forward, all part of the postgame inventory that comes after a loss with missed chances attached to it. The Seminoles now have to turn that disappointment into something more useful, because the margin for error in games like this is usually too small to survive repeated mistakes. [Read more 🡒]
Florida States Clemson Fallout Just Put One Huge Problem Front And Center
Florida States defensive reset is already underway, and Tony White is the first major casualty. After two seasons on the job, the Seminoles have moved on from the defensive coordinator, a decision that comes after a year in which the unit struggled badly and spent much of the 2026 season near the bottom of the national rankings in several categories.
White arrived in December 2024 with the expectation that he could stabilize that side of the ball, but the results never caught up to the assignment. Now Florida State has to sort out what comes next on defense while also dealing with the financial side of the move, since White is owed the remaining salary from his contract. [Read more 🡒]