What does the future look like for Amari Cooper?

FRISCO, Texas – It’s the time of year to evaluate your own roster of players.

As the Cowboys process a disappointing end to 2021, this leads to a lot of speculation about what lies ahead in 2022. This series looks to raise, and hopefully answer, a lot of questions about what this team will look like next year.

We’ll start with a position that presents a lot of uncertainty, the wide receiver corps, more specifically, where things stand with their star wide receiver.

What does the future look like for Amari Cooper?

As fast as things come, that’s how fast they go. And nowhere can that be seen more clearly than in the NFL.

Amari Cooper’s 2021 season exemplifies this beautifully: a year that went from promising to confusing in an instant.

Remember the Oct. 31 victory at Minnesota, when Cooper was the hero with three big receptions on the Cowboys’ final drive of the game, including the touchdown to help Cooper Rush to the win while Dak Prescott was recovering from a knee injury. the calf.

That win lifted the Cowboys to 6-1 and did much to improve Cooper’s individual stats. At that point in the year, he had caught 38 balls for 495 yards and five touchdowns. He was on pace to finish with 90-plus receptions for 1,200-plus yards.

We know what happened next. After a dominant victory against Atlanta, Cooper missed two key games against Kansas City and Las Vegas when he contracted COVID-19, and the Cowboys’ front office expressed some frustration that he hadn’t been vaccinated.

“When you walk in the locker room it’s about ‘us,'” Cowboys owner/general manager Jerry Jones said at the time. “We’re all counting on each other to do their part. Everybody expects that.”

Cooper returned and contributed to the Cowboys’ playoff run, but the results were lackluster. During the final nine games of the season, he averaged just four receptions for 48 yards on six attempts per week. That may not sound like much, but that’s a stark contrast to the first seven games, when he received the ball an average of eight times per game, averaging 5.4 receptions for 71 yards per outing.

It was enough for Cooper, who is normally a private person, to express his own frustration with the offense.

“It’s very frustrating. But that’s not something I can really control,” Cooper said in December. “But I do think there’s a benefit to him getting the ball in those big situations, like the red zone and the third down, because I know what I’m going to do, you know what I mean? I’m just going to be ready when That time will come. Hopefully it will be soon.”

Following the Cowboys’ elimination from the postseason, Jones followed up on that, expressing frustration that Cooper being the focal point of an opposing game plan shouldn’t stop him from having an impact.

“He should be able to catch up the middle when they go to him,” Jones said. “Others do. You throw to people who are covered all the time in the NFL. You have to. Most people don’t have the number of receivers that we’ve had.”

It’s a lot of context, but it helps frame the current situation.

Cooper just finished the second year of the five-year, $100 million extension he signed in 2020. The Cowboys moved up the guarantees in that deal to give them flexibility going forward. With those first two years off the books, they could part ways with Cooper, via trade or full release, and save themselves $6 million while costing $6 million on their 2022 salary cap.

The Cowboys haven’t made any public comments about their plans for the future, but the numbers make it easy to see why this is a topic of conversation. Add in the fact that Cooper’s $20 million salary is fully guaranteed on March 20, so it’s safe to say there should be some sort of decision soon.

Cooper himself was asked about that in the interview after the playoff loss to San Francisco and while he didn’t say much, he did acknowledge that he would like to stay in Dallas.

“I don’t make those decisions,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t know, but I hope (to stay).”

Cooper’s return would make things a little easier for the Cowboys as they look to restock their receiving depth chart. Michael Gallup, Cedrick Wilson, Noah Brown and Malik Turner are scheduled to be free agents next month. But keeping Cooper alongside CeeDee Lamb would give them two Pro Bowl receivers.

If Cooper isn’t in their plans for 2022, the wide receiver position suddenly appears to be the team’s biggest need. Lamb made the Pro Bowl this year on the strength of 79 receptions for 1,102 yards and six touchdowns. But without Cooper, he and Simi Fehoko would be the only contract receivers on this list. No doubt he would push the front office to bolster the depth chart, whether in free agency, the draft or both.

That’s why this is an appropriate place to start offseason speculation. It’s a pretty simple decision on its own, but it will have huge ramifications down the road on this list.