Dallas Cowboys: The Amari Cooper Situation (what to do?)

The Amari Cooper Situation with the Dallas Cowboys

Dak Prescott Case:

Prescott is good at surveying the field trying to take what’s easiest, and while this typically comes with experience, there might be a case to make that the severe ankle injury of 2020 has taken away from his arm strength. It’s also possible watching Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, and Aaron Rodgers make cyborg throws on a weekly basis is skewing my perception.

Anyhow, Amari Cooper playing on the outside is used to running many intermediate and deep routes. Prescott is good at finding time to throw over the middle of the field and has general anticipation when throwing down the sideline, but his passer rating when completing these throws was below average this season with the exception being the deep left boundary.

But guess who happens to be Dallas’s go-to receiver for throwing down the left boundaries?

This certainly isn’t to say Amari Cooper didn’t catch passes in the same area Gallup did, but it does validate the idea that Prescott is struggling to push the ball down the field more nowadays than he did in the past and the ankle and calf injuries might be a big reason why. He’s never been more efficient, but at what cost?

(Also, totally check out the other charts at Amazon NGS cause all of them are pretty insightful)

Amari Cooper Case:

There’s not much of a case here. He’s still really good and doesn’t look like he’s slowing down any time soon. *shrugs shoulders*

Final Summary:

So in all, it is hard to put the blame on one particular entity, but if you had to choose, it’s probably Kellen Moore? Unfortunately, Moore has the difficult task of making sure all the mouths are fed and that can complicate how he wants to use his personnel.

Sometimes not thinking too much about who should play instead of knowing what you can only play simplifies installing an offense because you’re game-planning with the proven formula in mind, not experimenting as much. Balance is hard and sometimes it ends up with the WR1 catching passes to end up WR3 on the depth chart.

Even with Kellen Moore having too many offensive weapons, Dak Prescott’s arm possibly declining, and CeeDee Lamb dropping passes, Amari Cooper continues to be a pillar of consistency the Cowboys would be foolish to release over “cap hell” reasons.