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The Dallas Cowboys traded wide receiver Amari Cooper to the Cleveland Browns this offseason. The wide receiver's time with the Cowboys was not always rosy. Following his departure, owner Jerry Jones criticized his availability.
The wide receiver missed a few games last season after testing positive for COVID-19. He refused to take the vaccine. He recently responded to Jones' comments about him.
During an interview with cleveland.com, he said:
“I wouldn’t say it was me marching to my own drum,” Cooper explained. “At the end of the day, I do understand that football is a team sport. But it was such an unprecedented type of moment in the NFL’s history for the decision to be made about putting something that not many people — not anybody knew — the effects of it, into your body.”
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Jones talked about players departing the Cowboys this season. He lumped Cooper alongside right tackle La'el Collins and defensive end Randy Gregory. Gregory missed games after violating the league's substance abuse policy.
Jones said:
"But more important than anything is these decisions that we made, I made, relative to top players not being here had everything to do with their availability and my concern about their availability,” Jones said.
“For instance, you could have the exact same player, and if you were paying him one thing, about 10-15% of what you’re looking at paying him, then you can do that all day long. And you can have half-a** availability, when you’re paying him 10-15%.”
Jones added:
"Those decisions were based more on availability than ability. It had everything to do with it. When you're talking about top-10 money, and you get around to half-ass availability ... I'm not talking Pig Latin here.
"I wanna be straight. I love those players personally. But the No. 1 thing you've got to do as a player to help us win football games is availability."
The Dallas Cowboys traded for Amari Cooper in 2018
On October 22, 2018, the wide receiver was traded from the Oakland Raiders to the Dallas Cowboys in exchange for a first-round pick in the 2019 NFL draft, which ended up being Johnathan Abram.
From 2018 to 2020, he had three-straight 1,000-yard seasons and was the number one receiver in Dallas.
With the emergence of third-year wide receiver CeeDee Lamb and Michael Gallup, the team decided to trade the wide receiver to the Browns this offseason.
Jones' comments were baffling because Cooper missed less than five games during his duration with the Cowboys.
He will now get the chance to be the top receiver in Cleveland with the Browns.
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