The Amari Cooper trade and the unfair criticism it has caused for the Cowboys’ executive staff

The Browns traded Amari for better draft picks, which makes the front office look bad again.

The Dallas Cowboys front office stock price is very low right now. The team has a lot of worries going into their bye week with a record of 3–3. The team’s lack of activity during the off-season is seen by many as the main reason. When people try to ask Jerry Jones about it, he only makes things worse. The trendy thing to do these days is to be mean to the front desk.

There are many things to be unhappy about, but the front desk gets some bad press sometimes. This past week, former Cowboys wide receiver Amari Cooper was moved from the Cleveland Browns to the Buffalo Bills. This made fans angry again because they think the Cowboys’ front office handled the Cooper situation very badly.

What we want to know today is: Did they really mess up? Do the different amounts of money he’s been paid in different deals show that the Cowboys’ front office didn’t negotiate well, or are there other factors at play that some people aren’t considering? Let’s look at each deal and then make our own choice.

Making a deal for a top wide receiver

In the beginning of 2018, the Cowboys’ attack was not working well. After Dez Bryant was let go in the summer, the team’s backups weren’t good enough, and the passing game had trouble. In terms of throwing yards, Dallas was in fourth place, and the team was 3-4 going into their bye week.

They did something about it and sent a 2019 first-round pick to the Oakland Raiders in return for Amari Cooper. The former Alabama star was picked fourth overall in the 2015 NFL Draft. He had back-to-back seasons with 1,000 yards in his first two years in the league. Then Cooper’s play started getting worse, and when the Raiders lost their first six games of 2018, he was a top deal target. Cooper was worth a first-round pick because he was only 24 years old and already had a good track record.

The Cowboys’ passing game got better right away when Cooper got on board, and they finished the regular season 7-2. He gained more than 1,100 yards the next two years, but after CeeDee Lamb became the team’s top wide receiver in 2021, he didn’t play as well.

A change of plans

There was a fifth-year option on Cooper’s contract, which gave the Cowboys a year and a half of player control. They planned to give him an extension, which they did in 2020. But what they didn’t expect was for Lamb to be picked up by them in the same year’s draft. Once they had been together for two seasons, Dallas knew who was worth the money and chose to break up with Cooper in 2022.

Cooper’s contract still had three years to go, but the Cowboys no longer had to pay him any guaranteed money. If the Cleveland Browns weren’t interested, Dallas would have let him go. Cooper wasn’t going to get a lot of draft capital because he would cost his new team $20 million a year in pay. The most any team was ready to give up was a fifth-round pick.

Some people will say this was one of the worst deals this team has ever made, but to fully judge it, you need to know what the Cowboys’ other choices were. Don’t keep him and pay him $20 million a year. Instead, get rid of him and use that money for other things. Cooper would have made the team better, but the front office thought that moving those funds around would make the team stronger. This trade isn’t as bad as some people think, no matter what side you’re on.

A rental of 11 games

The Browns traded him for a third and the Cowboys got a first in return. Without any other information, this makes the Cowboys’ front office look very bad. Again, though, it looks very different when all the facts are taken into account.

The Bills gave up a pick in the third round. Cooper will only cost Buffalo $806,667 for the rest of the season, so it costs more than what the Browns paid. Ohio has to pay $30 million in lost money. The Browns are looking ahead and saving some good draft cash because they are 1-5 to start the season.

Since they lost their two best wide receivers this summer, the Bills get a good one. For the same reason he did in Dallas, Cooper should spark Buffalo’s attack and become Josh Allen’s best tool. The bad thing about the trade is that the Bills can only keep him for the rest of the season unless they give him a longer deal.

Every trade for Cooper makes sense for the teams that made them because each had a different reason for making the deal. Everybody has an opinion on who got the best deal, but if you look closely, everything happened the way you thought it would.