Cowboys’ trade for Cooper comes at a high cost, but the payoff just might be worth it ... Keenum the latest failed experiment for Broncos GM Elway ... Good luck to ya, Bills!
1. Is Cooper worth anything close to a first-round pick?
NEWS: The Dallas Cowboys this week acquired wide receiver Amari Cooper from the Oakland Raiders, in a trade for a 2019 first-round draft pick.
VIEW: On the face of it, no, a now under-performing receiver selected No. 4 overall four years ago is still not worth a first-round pick. But as in any transaction, a person or thing is always worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
And the buzz was, the Cowboys’ division rivals who won the division and the
Super Bowl last season, the Philadelphia Eagles, apparently were willing to part with a second-round pick for Cooper. Like the Cowboys, the Eagles need a legit deep threat at wide receiver to loosen up defences.
Dallas couldn’t let the Eagles get Cooper, thus had to outbid them.
What’s more, numerous reports this week out of Texas say the Cowboys don’t believe a better receiver than Cooper will be available in the first round of next April’s draft. And after doing research, Cowboys scouts reportedly didn’t find that Cooper has any off-field issues contributing to his significantly lower production last season and this.
“We have heard so many positive things about him — his love of football and wanting to be part of something special,” Cowboys head coach Jason
Garrett said after the trade. Cooper is still only 24 years old, he’s durable (having missed only two career games) and in his first two NFL seasons he and Raiders QB Derek Carr connected more than 150 times for 11 touchdowns and back-toback 1,000-yard seasons.
Last year, though, Cooper’s production plummeted to 48 catches and 680 yards, and this year Carr targeted him more than five times only twice in six games. The result: Cooper has 22 catches for 280 yards and one touchdown.
Cooper doesn’t earn much money, at least this season, the fourth and final year of his rookie deal: only $412,000.
Next year, though, the Raiders committed to a fifth contract year (a club option for first-rounders), which means the Cowboys are now due to pay Cooper, as a 2015 No. 4 overall pick, $13.9 million in 2019, an amount that’s fully guaranteed and has a 100% cap hit.
Shedding that kind of cap room for next year surely was the trade motivation for Oakland’s head coach and football-department czar Jon Gruden.
Gruden’s worry now is trying to convince his 1-5 Raiders that he hasn’t folded the tents on the 2018 season. Good luck there.
As for the Cowboys, Cooper ought to be able to help the offence as hoped. QB Dak
Prescott desperately needs a receiver of Cooper’s quality.
This is the third such starreceiver-for-a-first-rounder trade that Cowboys owner/GM
Jerry Jones has made in the past quarter century. The other two didn’t work out.
This one should. And it better, at that high cost.
2. Has Elway become a failure as Broncos GM?
NEWS: Since luring free agent Peyton Manning to Denver in March 2012 — plus a slew of great free-agent players on both offence and defence leading up to Denver’s 2015 Super Bowl championship — John Elway has struck out on every quarterback acquisition through 2017. Maybe this year too.
The majority of locals believe Elway has failed again in signing Case Keenum as a free agent in March. Keenum this season in seven starts has thrown more interceptions (nine) than touchdowns (eight), after throwing for 22 TDs against only seven picks last year as a surprise elite-level QB for the Minnesota Vikings.
VIEW: Denver hasn’t had a reliably good passer since early in 2014, Manning’s last full season as starter. Since Manning retired as Super Bowl champion with the Broncos, Elway has swung and missed on four QBs and, after this year, maybe a fifth: Trevor Siemian, Paxton Lynch, Brock Osweiler
redux (last year) and, this week, Chad Kelly. Elway last year had used the last pick of the draft to select serially troubled Ole Miss QB Kelly, who this summer and fall had worked up to No. 2 behind Keenum, only to blow it Monday night.
Kelly — who was kicked off a Pennsylvania high school team before transferring to one in Buffalo, then off the Clemson Tigers before transferring to
Ole Miss — was arrested for first-degree criminal trespass. After causing a scene at a team party, the nephew of
Jim Kelly left and, according to police, plopped himself down on a couch in the home of a young family he doesn’t know, before eventually being arrested. Elway waived Kelly on Wednesday.
Elway signed Keenum out of desperation this past March, after the Vikings let him walk so they could instead sign Kirk Cousins.
Since winning it all in 2015, Elway’s Broncos haven’t been back to the playoffs. This year they’re 3-4 and not looking likely to reach the post-season either.
Fingers finally are starting to point Elway’s way in Denver. Is it possible the Keenum signing could be his last straw? Yeah, it’s possible.
3. New England is Buffalo’s opponent in the Bills’ first Monday night home game in 10 years.
NEWS: The Bills will trot out yet another quarterback at home to try to beat Bill Belichick, Tom
Brady and the New England Patriots: Derek Anderson.
This is only Anderson’s third week with the Bills, second start for the Bills, and second career start ever in Buffalo, after leading Cleveland to a snowy
6-3 win there in 2009, when he completed 2-of-17 for 23 yards, no touchdowns, one interception, one sack, two yards rushing and a 15.1 passer rating.
VIEW: Poor Anderson. He has a terrible O-line and a poor receiving corps, and his star running back (LeSean McCoy) was still in concussion protocol on Thursday. The Bills (2-5) are in as bad a position to defeat New England (5-2) as at any time this century — which, of course, is quite an indictment.
Brady, meantime, is going for career victory No. 15 in 17 starts at Buffalo’s New Era Field. To put that victory total in perspective, and as an indication of how many times the Bills change quarterbacks, the only Buffalo QBs this century anywhere in the ballpark of that many wins in that stadium, counting all home games, are Tyrod Taylor (17 from 2015-17), Drew Bledsoe
(14 from 2002-04) and Ryan
Fitzpatrick (12 from 2009-12).
None of J.P. Losman, Trent Edwards, EJ Manuel, Kelly Holcomb, Kyle Orton, Alex Van Pelt, Thad Lewis, current
backup Nathan Peterman or Jeff Tuel ever won more than seven games as Bills starter in that stadium. Ouch.