Amari Cooper: The Dallas Cowboys just made an epically bad trade

The Dallas Cowboys sent Amari Cooper to the Cleveland Browns for a fifth-round pick and swapped sixth-rounders in what may have been their worst trade ever

The Dallas Cowboys just gave Amari Cooper away for next to nothing. It was arguably the worst trade this team has ever made, and that’s saying something.

With Dallas in a bad situation in terms of the salary cap, they elected to ship off one of their best players as they traded Cooper to the Cleveland Browns for a fifth-round pick while also swapping sixth-round selections. For the Browns, it’s an absolute steal but for Dallas, it’s an epically bad move that highlights many of the mistakes they have been making in recent years when it comes to contracts.

Dallas finds themselves in cap purgatory due to their own poor decisions. First, they drug out the contract talks for DeMarcus Lawrence which drove his asking price up from $17 million per season to more than $20 million.

They failed to learn from that mistake as they did the exact same thing with Dak Prescott as they refused to extend him after his rookie deal ended and his asking price went from roughly $30-32 million per season to $40 million per year. For those math majors, that’s roughly $12 million per season they cost themselves by trying to strong-arm their offensive and defensive leader.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, they also decided it was a good idea to back up the Brinks truck and give Ezekiel Elliott a monster contract despite having two years left on his rookie deal. As expected, Elliott has been battling injuries as all running backs do when they start to tally a ton of carries but the Cowboys have to continue to pay him because they structured his contract in such a way that it would cost them $30 million in dead money to move on from him.

Dallas turned a Round 1 pick into a Round 5 pick with Amari Cooper trade

Originally, the Cowboys took a lot of heat for landing Amari Cooper in a trade with the Raiders back in 2018. They surrendered a first-round pick for him and the critics were in full force.

However, Dallas got the last laugh when Cooper helped them turn things around and continued to be a legit No. 1 option. But in the end, they ended up getting three years of work from him and flipped that for a fifth-rounder. That’s absolutely not how good franchises operate — but again, when you paint yourself into a corner with the cap, this is what happens.

While Dallas took grief for their mismanagement of their star players they (rightfully) took even more for the Zeke contract. We see why as it all came crashing down on them this offseason as their earlier attempts to pinch pennies not only cost them on the bottom line, but it now cost them one of their best players.

And they have no one to blame for this disaster other than themselves.