One Man’s Trash: League execs leave all Cowboys off ESPN’s WR rankings
As training camp approaches rapidly, the lull in offseason activity is graciously coming to a close. Soon, there will be actual football substance to gnaw on, rather than the current diet of lists and projections. This isn’t necessarily to besmirch said activity; there’s certainly a place and a value for staking claims to opinions of who is better than whom.
After all, people follow sports because it invokes emotional responses. If the only conversation was about who won the last championship there likely wouldn’t be billion-dollar industries. Along the desert path of the NFL summer, ESPN has been doing their version of positional rankings based on a collection of opinions of league executives. One thing the exercise has shown us, they’re just like us! Despite having well-paying jobs in the industry, some of the anonymous comments about the players have revealed similar trash opinions as one finds on social media. For the most part though, aside from some minor quibbles, the Dallas Cowboys have basically been properly represented. Until now.
In the latest and final positional rankings, there are no Cowboys to be found. Not in the rankings, not in the honorable mentions. While this would be no problem if the discussion was about positions the club routinely neglects like head coach safety or defensive tackle, it is a problem when the position is wide receiver.
The Cowboys have the league’s best wide receiver corps, and it isn’t just a sum-of-its-parts discussion either. CeeDee Lamb is an emerging star, but as just a second-year player it’s not egregious to leave him out of the conversation. He’ll have his time. Michael Gallup is a big-play threat, yes, but he doesn’t deserve consideration in a best-of conversation.
However Amari Cooper deserves to be in any conversation about the best talents at the wideout position.
First, a look at the criteria and selection process:
Voters gave us their best 10 to 15 players at a position, then we compiled the results and ranked candidates based on number of top-10 votes, composite average, interviews, research and film-study help from ESPN NFL analyst Matt Bowen. We had several ties, so we broke them by isolating the two-man matchup with additional voting and follow-up calls. Each section is packed with quotes and nuggets from the voters on every guy — even the honorable mentions.
The objective is to identify the best players right now for 2021. This is not a five-year projection or an achievement award. Who’s the best today? Pretty simple.
It’s a top-10 list and there are nine honorable mentions. While the write-up says that more than 20 receivers earned votes, when the process was whittled down, Cooper was left outside of the top 19.
How, Sway?
Certainly it was a down-ish year. Playing with a pupu platter of quarterbacks like Ben DiNucci, Garrett Gilbert and the ghost of Andy Dalton certainly played a role in Cooper’s yards-per-reception plummeting.
He averaged just 12.1 yards a catch last year, but it was on 92 receptions and just under 71% completion rate. In 2019, a full season with Dak Prescott at quarterback, Cooper finished third in the NFL in defense-adjusted yards above replacement (DYAR), a Football Outsiders metric that measures yardage worth based on game situation and opponent strength.
He ranked 10th in defense-adjusted value over average (DVOA) that season.
In the four full games Cooper had with Prescott under center, he caught 37 receptions for 401 yards. That’s a pace for 148 receptions and 1,604 yards.
Stacked on top of his 2019 performance (79 receptions, 1,189 yards, 8 TDs), stacked on top of his transformational 2018 performance (53 receptions, 735 yards, 6 scores in 9 games with Dallas) when he turned the offense around after a midseason trade and that doesn’t merit a mention as a top-19 receiver in the league? Seriously?
The disrespect is duly noted.
