On Monday, the Cowboys gave up a first-round pick for receiver Amari Cooper. On Tuesday, Cowboys coach Jason Garrett (to little surprise) defended the move.
“He’s 24 years old,” Garrett said during a weekly appearance on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas, via Jon Machota of the Dallas Morning News. “We think he has a bright future.”
Bright enough to justify a first-round pick?
“The value for a player like that at his age, that’s really what it costs you,” Garrett said. “It costs you a first round pick. If we were to get him in the draft next spring, you would say, ‘Boy, is there any receiver who is as good as a guy like Amari Cooper?’ He’s not 28, 29, 30. You’re not paying for a guy for what he’s done for the past six, seven, eight years for another team.”
But Cooper hasn’t performed over the past two years like a guy who merits a first-round pick. In 20 games he has played since the start of the 2017 season, Cooper has 70 receptions for 960 yards and eight touchdowns. Of those 20 games, he’s had four with 100 or more receiving yards; in the other 16 game (a full season of football), Cooper has had 38 catches for 391 yards.
That kind of production doesn’t merit a first-round pick, especially in light of the current posture of Cooper’s contract. (More on that in a later blurb.) The truth is that the Cowboys gave up a one because they had to give up a one, because the Eagles reportedly were at the table with a two. But for the presence of other suitors, maybe the Cowboys could have gotten Cooper for a second-round or even a third-round pick. With an auction emerging, the Cowboys had to overpay to get him.
Now that they have him, what do they really have? When owner/G.M. Jerry Jones recently defended the team’s absence of a No. 1 receiver in recent years, he was talking about a different former Alabama receiver, and there’s a big gap between Cooper and Julio Jones. Under that standard, the Cowboys still don’t have a No. 1 receiver, even though they gave up a draft pick -- and will give up the money -- that a No. 1 receiver commands.
The fact that the Cowboys surrendered a first-round pick (and the fact that they’re the Cowboys) will serve only to put more pressure on the team, the coaching staff, and quarterback Dak Prescott to justify the decision to make the move for Cooper. While will make it harder, not easier, to get the most out of the offense and to transform Prescott, Cooper, and Ezekiel Elliott into a revival of the Triplets.
“It’s going to require overtime by him, by the coaches, to get him going,” Garrett said. And he’s right. Because getting a receiver up to speed halfway through the regular season is the equivalent of changing a tire on a moving car, and the expectation that the new wheel will make a lemon into a Lamborghini will make it no easier to remove and replace the lug nuts before the old man hits the hub cap and for one brief moment we see all the bolts silhouetted against the lights of the traffic and then they are gone.
And then Cowboys fans will say fudge. Although they won’t say fudge.