NFL Reactions: Cooper Keeps Crushing

It was less than two months ago that the Cowboys had just lost to Washington, leaving Dallas with a 3-4 record heading into their bye. Washington was in control of the division at the time, but we all knew they were no good all the same. It was a pitiful look for the Cowboys, and the optics of Jerry Jones' obvious embarrassment warmed the heart of any non-Cowboy fan, and some of them maybe joined in anyway. Couldn't happen to a better guy, right? It was also at that same time that we were in the midst of our annual national agreement that Jason Garrett needed to be fired.

For a team in those circumstances to then trade a first-round pick for anything in particular seems like shortsighted desperation. That the conductor in question was Jones left the move with especially little benefit of the doubt. For the trade target to be a receiver in particular made it appear ill-advised – Jones already spent a total of three first round picks to make ill-fated trades for Joey Galloway and Roy Williams, and it looked like the same script was about to repeat itself.

The Cowboys are 5-1 since that trade, and with their 29-23 overtime victory Sunday over the Eagles they've won five in a row. In those six games, Cooper has 40 catches for 642 yards and six touchdowns on 53 targets. Perhaps more importantly, Dak Prescott has 12 total touchdowns (nine passing) to five turnovers in those games, among which were a shocking upset of the Saints and a season sweep of the Super Bowl champs. At 8-5 with both Washington and Philadelphia seemingly fully neutralized, every indication is that Dallas will take the NFC East.

Did Jerry Jones outsmart us all? Is Jason Garrett no longer a bad coach?

It's probably a 'no' on both counts, but at the very least this is an amusing instance of where the wrong process still gets the right results. It's almost categorically a bad practice to trade a first-round pick in-season. It's especially a bad practice to trade a first-round pick as a team seemingly headed toward the bottom half of its own division. It's also bad practice to trade a first-round pick for a player heading into a contract year. But if Jones ignores these otherwise bad impulses of his, Dallas isn't making the playoffs.

We know that that's true because, as much as the Cooper trade was universally bashed in NFL media, Sports Illustrated's Mike Silver reported that Philadelphia offered their second-round pick for Cooper before Jones offered Dallas' first-round pick. Which is to say, if Jerry doesn't "overpay" for Cooper, not only is Dallas not making the playoffs, but it would almost certainly be the Eagles in their exact place.

It took a stubborn, ignorant, belligerent man drunk on hubris to make the right call in this case. I thought Cooper was a very good player all along – his critics were frankly irrational – but even I couldn't sell that trade since it came at the cost of not just the first-round pick, but also a contract extension that could very well result in Cooper being the highest-paid receiver in the league this offseason or next. Dallas almost certainly won't win the Super Bowl, and they could very well get knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. But they have one of the best receivers in the league, and his arrival basically solved Prescott's issues too. Jones' shortsightedness may have inadvertently solved the Dallas passing game for the long term.

But there's no doubt that Dallas is only in this advantageous position because of dumb luck. Cooper's heroics against the Eagles on Sunday were just that – 10 catches for 217 yards and three touchdowns is the work of a star – but even Cooper said in the post-game interview that the Eagles knew he was running a slant on the final play. That Rasul Douglas tipped the ball to Cooper for the game-winning touchdown instead of taking that ball and the division lead with it was probably something like a 1/20 outcome. That's not to knock Cooper – he played like a beast from start to finish and gets full credit for making Douglas pay for the gaffe. I'm proud to have been a Cooper truther all this time.

• Josh Allen continues to show tantalizing abilities as a dual-threat playmaker, with a railgun arm that forces the defense to turn and run and leave room for him to capitalize as a runner underneath, where his 4.75 speed on a 240-pound frame makes him difficult to tackle one-on-one. I still don't think he'll ever develop even average accuracy, but it's interesting how his application in the NFL has differed so strongly from his college usage and especially his pro projection. Like I said last week, the scouts and coaches who loved Allen so much thought he was Drew Bledsoe. Offensive coordinator Brian Daboll was smart enough to call that off, and he makes Allen's prior coaches look silly for it. Allen isn't good at making reads through a congested defense, and he isn't accurate enough to thread the needle. So throw deep to clear up the congestion, and establish boundary rushing threats so the needle has more room. I think Allen is basically Vince Young in his current form, but Allen has a much bigger frame and can probably make a sustainable, permanent re-brand as a running quarterback. I doubt the underneath or intermediate skill set is ever there, so I think he'll always be streak-prone, but if you commit to a homerun-centric offense and learn to live with the cold spells, it really might work with him. In the meantime, even if he never improves one bit, we know his upside is still high for fantasy football in any given week.

• Aaron Rodgers is 1-0 without Mike McCarthy, but the Green Bay offense is still a mess. Rodgers' big plays required nothing less than wizardry, teleporting the ball into the hands of receivers who weren't at all open while almost all the snaps in between resulted in at least one of: (a) quick pressure, (b) no open receivers, or (c) dropped passes, particularly in the case of Jimmy Graham. There's only so much blame Graham specifically can shoulder since he's playing through a broken thumb, but still. The rookie wide receivers will be better next year for Green Bay, but a complete scheme overhaul is about 12 years overdue.

• It was easy to miss in a wild Sunday with other headline-grabbing stories, but the Packers inexplicably, unforgivably, did not give Aaron Jones a touch until the second quarter. Jamaal Williams started the game and saw meaningful touches to open the game. Jones ended up with 17 carries over those final three quarters, but a coaching staff with a clue would have precisely reversed the timing of the two running backs' usage. You use Jones to score points, you use Williams to run out the clock. If you save Jones later for some reason there's a good chance the game script won't even give you the chance to run at that point. Unless there was some sort of unannounced one-quarter disciplinary suspension for Jones or some other such absurd thing, Green Bay's handling of Jones on Sunday was jaw-dropping stupidity.

• Dan Snyder deserves every bit of misfortune he gets. I encourage him to give Mark Sanchez another shot as starter next week. He needs some time to settle in and it's only fair to give him some time to learn the offense.

• The Giants were smart to pick up Corey Coleman and give him reps in their season's meaningless second half. There's presumably some sort of headcase issue with Coleman, but the skill and athletic talent are still substantial. He bounced around the league this year because he burned his bridges in Cleveland, and for his subsequent travels he couldn't provide enough immediate wide receiver snaps to offset the roster drag of his inability to contribute on special teams. If Coleman's head is on straight and he's healthy, he's better than Sterling Shepard. Perhaps it's stupid but I'm already mentally preparing for the seeming certainty that I spend all of my 20th-round picks on Coleman in 2019.

• Cam Newton's shoulder is a problem, and he suffered a proper meltdown in the second half against Cleveland. Now 6-7 with the serious possibility that Newton's shoulder requires surgical repair, we might want to ready ourselves for the chances of Taylor Heinicke starts before the year is over. With nine catches for 77 yards on 11 targets, Ian Thomas is apparently a viable mainstream starting tight end either way.

• Baker Mayfield has been pretty much spectacular since the Browns fired Hue Jackson and installed Freddie Kitchens as offensive coordinator. In those five starts he's completed 73.2 percent of his passes for 1,406 yards (9.2 YPA), 11 touchdowns, and four interceptions. He's arguably already a viable QB1 for fantasy, and he'll rightfully be one of the most anticipated players of 2019.

• Sony Michel is a totally decent player, but picking him over Nick Chubb will probably be one of the worst failures in a Bill Belichick career that can certainly afford a few.

• Kenny Stills can do what he did Sunday in any other game, too. If the Dolphins pick a good coach before next year it will be in spite of owner Stephen Ross, and I really wish Stills would get out of town otherwise. I'm convinced he's a top-50 NFL wide receiver. Stills has seen 292 targets in his four seasons with Miami, resulting in 151 catches for 2,382 yards (8.2 YPT) and 23 touchdowns. Stills was a possession receiver in college (12.7 YPR), so it makes no sense how the Dolphins refuse to use him fewer than 15 yards downfield.

• Lamar Jackson was almost able to lead Baltimore to a road upset at Arrowhead Stadium, but he couldn't quite do it and managed to pick up an ankle injury along the way. I would probably expect Joe Flacco to start next week, because they don't need to be starting Jackson at anything less than 100 percent.

• Spencer Ware quietly had a superb game for the Chiefs. He turned 15 carries into 75 yards against the tough Ravens defense, and five targets into five catches for 54 yards. It's easy to forget that Kareem Hunt might have never started over Ware if not for his preseason knee injury last year. Ware was an at least adequate starter for the Chiefs prior to that.

• Case Keenum collapsed without Emmanuel Sanders around, but Daesean Hamilton showed the ability to produce despite the dysfunction. Replacing Sanders in the slot, Hamilton is clearly Denver's future at the position, and he passed his first test by turning nine targets into seven receptions for 47 yards and a touchdown. Fellow prospect Tim Patrick is unheralded out of Utah, but he's a 6-foot-4 target with sub-4.5 speed who was productive in college. I don't think you can feel reassured with any of the three young Broncos wideouts (the third being Courtland Sutton), but they have plenty of talent to mold in the future.

• Dante Pettis is a strange player because he's a slot receiver who makes plays in the red zone, but that's a very good thing, especially since he's positioned in a Kyle Shanahan offense. When Jimmy Garoppolo is back next year, both Pettis and Marquise Goodwin could really take off in what will be a blazing-fast offense with Breida/McKinnon at running back and George Kittle at TE.

• Ezekiel Elliott is amazing, and after 40 touches from scrimmage Sunday you just hope the Cowboys don't wear out his career too fast. I'd take him in real life over any running back other than Saquon Barkley. Barkley and Elliott could both go down as top-10 running backs all time.

• The Cowboys could have a very dangerous passing game if Prescott ever stops missing Michael Gallup when he's wide open downfield. Speed is not a big part of Gallup's game, so I think it's encouraging that he keeps getting open downfield anyway. Dallas was very lucky to get him in the third round in what is quickly establishing itself as a strong rookie wideout class.

• I don't think there's any actual decline on the part of Antonio Brown, but Juju Smith-Schuster really might be the best receiver on the Steelers at this point. In which case, two of the five best receivers in the league play for this team. JSS turned 22 just over two weeks ago.

• I thought and hoped he would do better, but Jaylen Samuels generally did what I expected him to in his first start, which is pretty much his first start as a real running back even going back to college. When you practice with three different positional groups, you cap the development rate at all of them. As a pure runner Samuels still has a lot of developing to do, but he unsurprisingly made it look easy as a receiver by turning seven targets into seven catches for 64 yards. With a 4.54-second 40-yard dash and 6.93-second three-cone drill at 225 pounds, Samuels is a standout athlete at running back and therefore has the tools to develop into a strong runner eventually. All he really did at North Carolina State was goal-line carries and novelty touches when playing running back.