DALLAS — The question was posed to Dallas Cowboys fans during the last offseason: What if Michael Gallup had more of a future with the team than Amari Cooper?
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Cooper's time in Dallas may be coming to an end as the Cowboys are inclined to release the four-time Pro Bowl receiver. Dallas is salary cap-strapped with the team already projected to be $21.1 million over the league’s limit in the coming 2022 season.
Incidentally, Cooper is due $20 million five days after the new league year, which kicks off March 16 at 3:00 p.m. Central Time.
Cooper is an easy target for the Cowboys' cost-cutting measures, as he will be a $22 million expenditure for 2022. But none of that money is guaranteed — at least not the base salary — until the fifth day of the official 2022 NFL year. By cutting Cooper before then, the Cowboys could stand to save $16 million against the salary cap.
Dallas would have to bury $6 million in dead cap money for the privilege of losing one of quarterback Dak Prescott’s go-to options due to the early termination of Cooper's five-year, $100 million contract that was inked in 2020.
From a business standpoint, it made sense that Cooper's 2022 return to Dallas would be dubious. The former Oakland Raiders 2015 first-round pick will be 28 years old when next season kicks off. Although Cooper has missed just five games in his career, there are fewer healthy seasons ahead just on the basis of Father Time being undefeated.
Looking to retain pending free agent Gallup makes the proposition of losing Cooper perhaps easier to swallow. With Gallup tearing his ACL, the former 2018 third-round pick missed his chance to cash in on his contract season with only nine games played. If Dallas wanted to, they could try to talk Gallup into taking a team-friendly discount just two years after he had a 1,107-yard campaign the last time both he and Prescott were healthy in the same year.
As late as the NFL Scouting Combine, the body language from the front office was enough to indicate Cooper's future in Dallas may have been all used up. COO Stephen Jones was noncommittal about Cooper's status for 2022, as though reporters were asking him about a free agent or a player with an expiring contract on Feb. 28.
“It’s too early for me to address that yet," Jones said. "We’re continuing to have conversations. A lot of things affect that in terms of — we’ve obviously been so fortunate to have those three great receivers on our roster, and obviously that’s hard to keep doing under a salary cap. Certainly Ced [Wilson] did a really nice job for us. He’s up. There’s some moving parts to that that we’ll have to continue to massage as we move forward.”
Part of the massage means making a cut, and Cooper may be the target.
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