2022 NFL Trades: Compensation for Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill makes Amari Cooper trade look worse

Every situation is different. We can all agree on that.

Team X may evaluate a player differently than Team Y does. Player A may thrive for Team X but underwhelm for Team Y. The variables that go into success in the National Football League are vast and in many ways unpredictable.

Acknowledging that this is the case though there are comparisons that can be made. We can look to one team or player and draw a conclusion about someone similar and then inject the necessary context. That is how we should always operate.

This is a line of thought that many have been stressing with regards to this Dallas Cowboys offseason, by the way. What may be right for another franchise may not be for Dallas. To their credit they are coming off of an impressive 12-5 campaign so perhaps their way of doing things works for them and should be what matters most.

But one recent move from the organization continues to look worse and worse thanks to action swirling around the NFL. And it likely isn’t going to look any better any time soon.

Trade compensation for Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill makes what the Dallas Cowboys got for Amari Cooper look all the worse

Things across the NFL this offseason have been truly and totally bananas. Star players are switching teams left and right and somehow, some way, most of them are winding up on teams that the Dallas Cowboys do not play in 2022. Talk about luck!

That might be where Dallas’ good fortune ends though, at least for the purposes of this conversation. While the Cowboys have been focused on retaining their own players (12 so far, stay up to date on all things Dallas Cowboys free agency with our tracker right here) they have chosen to move on from two specifically - Amari Cooper and La’el Collins.

The latter wound up with the AFC Champion Cincinnati Bengals, one of the teams who have ‘loaded up’ that the Cowboys will actually face this coming season. Amari Cooper on the other hand wound up with the Cleveland Browns who the Cowboys would only see this season in the Super Bowl, odds that were improved for Cleveland at least with the acquisition of quarterback Deshaun Watson late last week.

Amari is one of four well-known receivers who have been traded this offseason. Robert Woods was sent from the Los Angeles Rams to the Tennessee Titans (who Dallas will also see this season), Davante Adams was sent from the Green Bay Packers to the Las Vegas Raiders, and on Wednesday the Miami Dolphins joined the party by acquiring Tyreek Hill from the Kansas City Chiefs.

The way these are listed is the chronological order in which they took place. Acknowledging that these are four different players and eight different teams involved looking at what the teams giving up wide receivers got in return for them does not smile all too brightly on the Cowboys.

What Dallas received in the Amari Cooper trade:

• 2022 5th round pick
• 2022 6th round pick

What Cleveland received in the Amari Cooper trade:

• Amari Cooper
• 2022 6th round pick

What Los Angeles received in the Robert Woods trade:

• 2023 6th round pick

What Tennessee received in the Robert Woods trade:

• Robert Woods

What Green Bay received in the Davante Adams trade:

• 2022 1st round pick
• 2022 2nd round pick

What Las Vegas received in the Davante Adams trade:

• Davante Adams

What Kansas City received in the Tyreek Hill trade:

• 2022 1st round pick
• 2022 2nd round pick
• 2022 4th round pick
• 2023 4th round pick
• 2023 6th round pick

What Miami received in the Tyreek Hill trade:

• Tyreek Hill

These may appear to be four different situations but generalizing them a bit they are really just two.

Amari Cooper and Robert Woods were moved on by their teams for salary cap relief whereas Davante Adams and Tyreek Hill were traded away because they wanted new deals that their previous teams were unwilling to give them (the former also reportedly wanted to play for the Raiders specifically). Davante Adams was rewarded with a 5-year, $141.25M deal where Tyreek Hill just got a 4-year, $120M extension from Miami. That is obviously a lot of money.

So we have established that these are four unique situations with two general paths that two teams took each in a general sense, but coming back down from the macro view makes things a little bit upsetting from a Dallas Cowboys perspective.

While no Cowboys fan will sit here and tell you that Amari Cooper is Davante Adams or Tyreek Hill if we were to look at the overall spectrum of wide receivers in the NFL he is much closer to them than he is to Robert Woods. And that would even be a healthy Woods, not one coming off of a torn ACL that happened in November.

Why then were the Cowboys unable to get anything remotely close to the compensation that Green Bay or Kansas City got? Unlike the Raiders and Dolphins the Browns didn’t even have to give Amari Cooper a new deal on top of the draft compensation involved in trading him away (on a related note the Browns did restructure his deal in the way that the Cowboys wouldn’t); We can debate the particulars all we want but Amari is a top 10-15 wide receiver, did not require a new contract, and is not coming off of an injury that requires a lengthy recovery time.

It is one thing for the Cowboys or anyone to feel like moving on from Amari Cooper was in the best interest of the team. People have different opinions on that, but there is logic to that point that some will argue.

But what is undeniable is that in looking at what receivers are fetching on the trade market that the Cowboys seemingly left some meat on the phone (shout out to Joseph Randle). While he may not have commanded the hauls that Adams or Hill did he certainly should have netted more than what he did all things considered.