So much about the negotiation process is dependent on mutual interest in the two parties over the topic of negotiation. It doesn’t matter how great a deal a car salesman or real estate agent is offering you on a car or a house if you’re not interested in buying the car or house, you won’t but the car or the house. However, if you’re going to a car dealership or an open house looking to buy, odds are you’ll make a decision on the product.
This is where Amari Cooper and the Dallas Cowboys find themselves this offseason. Both Cooper and the Cowboys front office have a mutual interest in finding a long-term contract that keeps Cooper with the Cowboys for the foreseeable future. Since trading their 2019 first-round pick for Cooper in the middle of the 2018 season, the Cowboys front office from Jerry Jones on down has expressed interest in having Cooper catch passes for the Cowboys for a long time coming.
In turn, Amari Cooper has expressed a desire to remain a member of the Dallas Cowboys. Just last night in an interview with 105.3 The Fan’s Chris Arnold and Zach Wolchuck.
In the interview, Cooper didn’t mince words when asked about his desire to continue playing for America’s Team.
“Listen. I love being a Dallas Cowboy. I love everything about it. I was just thinking about that today. I think about it almost every day, really. Just primetime games. It seems like more night games than everybody and that always feels good to a football player. You know everything. The facility, I love it here in Frisco where I stay at now. Just the aura of being a Dallas Cowboy, you can’t beat it.”
He went on to say, “I want to be a Dallas Cowboy for life.”
If that isn’t a clear indication that Amari Cooper will be playing for the Dallas Cowboys and beyond, I don’t know what is. Despite the rhetoric, generally from media outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth market, there’s very little chance that Cooper is allowed to leave in free agency.
The Dallas Cowboys are getting ready to hand their quarterback one of the richest contracts in the history of the NFL. You don’t do that without a plan in place to make that very rich contract as successful as possible and Amari Cooper is a part of that plan.
Their instant chemistry is what propelled the Dallas Cowboys from a 3-5 team at the midway point in the 2018 season to a 10-6 NFC East Champion and divisional round participant in the playoffs. Much like the connection between Tony Romo and Dez Bryant, Dak Prescott to Amari Cooper has been incredibly dangerous. Cooper even sited his chemistry and relationship as part of the reason he would like to stay in Dallas.
“Very important. We’ve built a good relationship so far. From the time I got here we were able to hit the ground running and just from my experience in being in the NFL I wouldn’t say that that’s a common thing. Sometimes you can line up with a quarterback after getting traded or going to a new team, whether it’s the draft or whatever, and it not go so smooth. And so I wouldn’t try to trade that for anything because I know what can be on the other side of that. I would say it’s very important.”
Amari Cooper isn’t necessarily throwing shade at his previous quarterback here, Derek Carr, but he is playing up the value of having the kind of chemistry that Cooper has with Dak Prescott. It’s telling that Cooper said, he wouldn’t trade that chemistry for anything. That’s more than the typical platitudes we get from big-name free agents during the offseason.
With less than a week to the franchise tag deadline and less than two weeks to the opening of free agency, a lot of movement is going to happen between the Cowboys and the players and eventually, they’ll fit all the financial pieces together. Cooper doing a media appearance in the middle of contract negotiations is a very positive sign that he and the Dallas Cowboys are close to getting a deal done.
The Dallas Cowboys want Amari Cooper. Amari Cooper wants to stay with the Dallas Cowboys. Any speculation that has Cooper joining another NFL franchise is just that; speculation.
