Mac Engel: How Cleveland's Amari Cooper remains the Dallas Cowboys big win, and big loss

Sometimes a team will make a trade knowing they are giving up a good player with the idea being, “Let him be good someplace else.”

Ultimately, that’s how they felt about No. 1 wide receiver Amari Cooper. They let him be good someplace else, and on Sunday in Cleveland it’s apt to bite them in their smug faces. If Cooper goes off and makes fantasy football owners happy, put this on Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy.

If McCarthy and a few of his staffers wanted Cooper around, the Cowboys would have found a way to keep him.

Rather than Cooper lining up opposite CeeDee Lamb to form one of the NFL’s scariest receiving duos, it’s CeeDee and The Who Are Yous?

Of the plethora of moves this team has made in the last 20-plus years, none is quite like Amari Cooper. He is one of the best trades this team has made, and one of its worst.

Why trading Amari Cooper was one of the best

In 2018, the Cowboys’ plan was to move on from the wide receiver Dez Bryant and go with a “by committee” approach. At receiver, they went with Terrance Williams, Deonte Thompson with Allen Hurns, Tavon Austin and Michael Gallup.

After Week 7, it was evident the plan was a bust. The Cowboys were 3-4, and their receivers were a major issue.

The day after losing to Washington, the club sent their 2019 first round pick to Oakland for Cooper. The traded yielded immediate dividends like few deals do.

With Cooper, the Cowboys won seven of their final eight games, and they defeated the Seattle Seahawks in the wild-card round before losing to the Rams in L.A. in the divisional round.

On the day of the 2019 NFL Draft, as other teams introduced their first round picks, the Cowboys “celebrated” by going over Cooper’s contributions the previous season. Cooper was a good pass catcher, and one of the best route runners in the league.

Meanwhile, the Raiders used the Cowboys’ selection, 27th overall, on safety Johnathan Abram, who has since bounced around active rosters and practice squads of a few other NFL teams. This was a case of a trade where one team clearly won.

Cooper caught 79 passes for 1,189 yards in 2019 for a team that narrowly missed the playoffs. In March of 2020, they signed Cooper to a five-year, $100 million contract.

Why trading Amari Cooper was one of the worst

Cooper was a well-liked pro by teammates, but there was always something about him that coaches didn’t love. Mostly because Cooper had other interests beyond football. He’s mostly an unemotional, cerebral guy who enjoys playing chess.

Before the start of the 2021 season, the NFL Player’s Association agreed with the NFL that its members should take the COVID vaccine. There were rules in place. Cooper took the risk of not taking the shot, which angered members of the front office, including the big boss.

Sure enough, that fall Cooper tested positive for COVID and was forced to miss multiple games as a result.

By this point, the team had drafted CeeDee Lamb and Gallup was developing into a solid receiver. Cooper was “expendable.”

Even though Gallup suffered a torn ACL in the second-to-last regular season game of the 2022 season, on March 13 of that year they gave him a five-year, $62.5 million contract.

Three days later, the Cowboys traded Cooper to the Browns for a fifth-round selection, and a swap of sixth round picks.

Of those three picks, the only one who has done anything of note is Matt Waletzko, the fifth-round selection who is currently a backup swing tackle for the Cowboys.

The Cowboys said they traded Cooper because they couldn’t make his $20 million salary for that season work. What they didn’t say was that they just didn’t want him on the team. The contract was a nice excuse.

In Cleveland, Cooper became the first Browns receiver to ever post consecutive 1,000-yard receiving seasons; in his two years with the Browns, he has 2,410 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns on 150 receptions.

Back with the Cowboys, they traded for veteran Brandin Cooks before the start of the ‘23 season; Lamb flourished as a No. 1 receiver but Gallup never fully recovered from his ACL injury and the team released him in June.

There exists an ocean-sized gap between Lamb and the Cowboys’ No. 2 receiver.

In the end, the Cowboys “won big” when they dealt for Amari Cooper, and “lost big” when they traded him less than four years later.

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