Report: Raiders shopping Amari Cooper, Karl Joseph
The Oakland Raiders have already made headlines in all the wrong ways by dealing away former first-round draft pick Khalil Mack, and now, reports are suggesting they’ll do the same thing with the team’s two first-round picks from the seasons right after Mack arrived.
Fox Sports’ Jay Glazer reported Sunday morning that the Raiders are actively shopping both 2014 first-rounder Amari Cooper and 2015 first-rounder Karl Joseph. Cooper, a wide receiver, has been an inconsistent but occasionally brilliant wide receiver, while Joseph has largely underperformed at safety.
Oakland fell to 1-5 after losing in London to the Seattle Seahawks, 27-3, a game in which Cooper took a nasty shot to the head.
What is Jon Gruden doing?
What’s happening here, of course, is that Raiders head coach Jon Gruden is blowing up the team to re-form it in his own image. Which, of course, is his right; that’s why Raiders owner Mark Davis signed Gruden to that famed nine-figure contract. The decision to move Joseph, and to a lesser extent Cooper, is a lot more defensible than the one to move Mack, but in the end, the result is the same: a Raiders roster strip-mined of familiar faces.
It’s too early to start pegging destinations for either player, at least until the Raiders’ demands start to become known. But plenty of teams, particularly in the NFC South, could use help in the secondary, and plenty of other teams, particularly in the NFC East, could use some receiver assistance.
And Raiders fans are going to need a program to figure out who’s playing for them.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.
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