Amari Cooper is somehow making Cowboys' Jerry Jones look even more cheap

It's been over two years now since the Dallas Cowboys betrayed their fans and traded star wide receiver Amari Cooper to the Cleveland Browns. While the Cowboys had an up-and-coming superstar in CeeDee Lamb entering his third year when Cooper was dealt, Lamb wasn't going to get an extension for at least another year.

Well, here we are two years later and Lamb still isn't signed. And the player Jerry Jones kept over Cooper, Michael Gallup, is no longer with the team. Gallup was released in March following a second-straight underwhelming season post-ACL surgery.

If you connect the dots, yes, Jones chose to pay a rehabbing Gallup $12.5 million per year over honoring the remainder of Cooper's contract, which paid him $20 million annually. While Jones did technically save money in the long run, he hurt his team on the field beyond measure.

When you take all of that into account, including what the Cowboys got for Cooper (a 2022 fifth-round pick and 2022 sixth-round pick swap), it's fair to call it one of the worst trades in franchise history.

Sure enough, Jones looks even more stingy in hindsight now that Cooper is holding out of Browns minicamp as he seeks a new deal.

Amari Cooper's holdout makes Cowboys owner Jerry Jones look even more cheap

Cooper is still signed to the five-year, $100 million contract he inked with the Cowboys during the 2020 offseason. He's slated to earn $20 million this season, which ranks 19th amongst wide receivers now that the baseline salary for upper-echelon wideouts has climbed to $25 million.

The deal made Cooper the second highest-paid receiver in the league at the time. Only Falcons superstar Julio Jones had a higher AAV.

Over the next two seasons in Dallas, Cooper caught 146 passes for 2,025 yards and 13 touchdowns. A forward-thinking franchise would have considered extending Cooper again in 2022 (when he was just 27 years old) to get ahead of the fast-evolving market.

Alas, Dallas shipped Cooper to Cleveland, where he reminded Jerry Jones that he's still an elite receiver deserving of more than $20 million per year. In 2022, Cooper set a new career-high with nine touchdown catches. This past season, he set a new personal best with 1,250 receiving yards.

He has the eighth-most receiving yards in the NFL since the trade, 12th-most touchdowns and he ranks third in yards per catch. Those numbers become even more impressive when you consider Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson has started 12 of a possible 34 games since Cooper's arrival. So, Cooper is posting top-10 numbers in spite of one of the most unsteady QB rooms in the league.

And Jerry Jones didn't think he was worth $20 million. This is going to look so much worse for Jones once the Browns inevitably extend Cooper to end his holdout.

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