New England Patriots: Case to Sign Riley Cooper
The New England Patriots could use a wide receiver! The Philadelphia Eagles cut wide receiver Riley Cooper on the first day they were able to. Here’s the case for the New England Patriots signing him.
It’s just about that time of year when the New England Patriots go on their annual thrift-store shopping trip in free agency, and the wide receiver market just got a, um, controversial addition: now-former Philly Eagle, Mr. Riley T. Cooper.
Hey, at least it beats another week of talking about Calvin Johnson maybe or maybe not retiring, right?
After a season full of enough injuries that even the Black Knight from Monty Python would be like “Damn, dude”, the New England Patriots proved that their receiving corps are absolutely up there with the NFL’s best when they’re all healthy. They also proved that the wide receiver depth chart is more top-heavy than Kate Upton.
After Julian Edelman’s broken foot, Danny Amendola’s knee injuries, and Brandon Lafell’s foot injury (to say nothing about Lafell’s case of the dropsies), the New England Patriots offense went from hanging 30 or more points in 7 of their first 8 games to scoring a pitiful 10 points against Miami in week 17 with homefield advantage on the line.
Back to Riley Cooper: hopefully he wasn’t on your fantasy team this past season, because by his own benchmarks, it was a disaster. Cooper was solid with the Eagles for two straight seasons in 2013 and 2014, catching 102 passes and 11 touchdowns before he fell off a cliff with the rest of the Eagles this year.
After two seasons catching 47 and 55 passes in ’13 and ’14, respectively, RC’s production faceplanted. He only caught 21 passes and 2 touchdowns in 2015, and the Eagles were, well, of course, the second most hilariously dysfunctional team in the NFL.
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(Dallas still totally wins the “most hilariously dysfunctional” award, by the way. It takes real talent for a roster that loaded to be that bad.)
So what’s the draw for the New England Patriots, if Cooper had a bad season and might be about to get slapped with the dreaded “washed up” label?
For starters, the Eagles passing game basically turned into a season-long “THEY ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE!!!” when Chip Kelly started making his unholy chef salad of an offense. By the time we’d gotten to the end of September, Sam Bradford hadn’t completed a pass over 20 yards.
By the merciful end of the season, Bradford just barely managed to top his own highest yards-per-attempt ratio ever – he averaged 7.0 yards per attempt in 2015, compared to his previous best of 6.7 in 2013.
There’s nothing wrong with a quick, short passing game, but it doesn’t play to what Riley Cooper excels at – pulling down longer passes. Nobody’s going to confuse him with DeSean Jackson anytime soon, but Cooper’s average yards per reception in his breakout 2013 season was 17.8. By definition, his average yardage per reception that year was almost a deep pass (20+ yards) every time.
2014 wasn’t quite as productive with the long ball. Riley Cooper actually caught more passes in 2014 (55), but his yards per reception dropped almost in half, going from 17.8 to 10.5. This season pretty much sat in the middle. Despite only catching 21 passes in 2015, Cooper’s average yards per reception climbed all the way back up to 15.6…again, with Sam Freaking Bradford and Mark Freaking Sanchez at quarterback.
Here’s where it gets fun – in his last two seasons with the Carolina Panthers, Brandon Lafell posted almost identical numbers:
2012: 44 receptions, 677 yards, 4 touchdowns.
2013: 49 receptions, 627 yards, 5 touchdowns.
Lafell, of course, signed with the Patriots for the 2014 “We’re on to the Super Bowl” campaign, shattered his own personal records for receiving yards (953), touchdowns (7), and receptions (74), and caught the first touchdown pass in the 2014 Super Bowl.
And for the crowd that cries every year that the New England Patriots need some taller receivers, Riley Cooper is actually an inch taller than Brandon Lafell at 6’3’’, and weighs in eight pounds heavier at 214lbs.
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Now, about that “incident” that Riley Cooper is probably best known for…
Yes, the video of him dropping the N-bomb at a country music show was a real dirtbag, racist thing to say. The difference between that, and, say, someone like Adrian Peterson or Greg Hardy, both of whom did awful things and then looked around at everyone like “What? What’d I do?” is that Cooper profusely apologized and has kept his nose clean ever since.
Here’s what he had to say after taking some time away from the Eagles in 2013, meeting with his teammates, and talking one-on-one with coach Chip Kelly:
“It’s going to be tough. No doubt it’s going to be tough. I’m going to live with this every day for the rest of my life.”
“We just talked about this situation and how big this is,” Cooper said. “I realize that. I realize how many people I hurt, how many families I hurt and how many kids I hurt. That’s what we walked about — the severity.”
“I just went out and seeked help. I talked with my family and seeked help — I’m going to keep that with me and the others that are helping out, but it went well,” Cooper said. “It took a few days. It’s been a tough ride. I talked to Chip last night and this morning and he asked me ‘How do you feel? Are you ready to come back?’ and I said ‘Absolutely, I love being out there on the field, I love being out there with my guys.'”
It was good enough for his teammates, like DeMeco Ryans, to move along, with Ryans saying that “I just said ‘What’s up man? Good to have you back out here. I know Riley out of this situation surely felt like an outcast — and we have to bring him back in as our teammate and as our brother and resolve this issue and move forward. We can’t have any ill feelings lingering throughout this season.”
This isn’t exactly Josh Gordon or Johnny Manziel we’re talking about here, it’s a guy who drank too much, said something stupid, and then did everything he could to fix his own idiotic screw-up.
So what we have, at the end of the day, is a 28-year-old receiver a year removed from two solid seasons that got cut when he was slated to make $4.5 million in 2016. A taller receiver that’s posted decent stats despite playing with mid-level – and that’s being generous – quarterback talent. And, in all likelihood, a guy some teams probably won’t even consider because of the Kenny Chesney incident.
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Sounds like a classic Bill Belichick thrift shopping opportunity.