Exactly. The 'downgrade' from Jones to Long for the money saved, take a flyer on Cooper and get a #2 in a year you were down a pick. For all we know the synthetic weed thing made taking Cooper and his salary a prerequisite to getting a 2 instead of a 3. I don't imagine that sat well with BB and it certainly must have lowered his trade value at least a little.
The synthetic weed thing is the X factor - maybe they decided they didn't want Jones on the team this year, period, in which case it's hard to complain about the haul they got.
Yes the Patriots are not the Colts. The Patriots construct their team based on a multiple year approach that often bypasses expensive veterans for a combination of solid middleclass players and cheaper young players working on their rookie deals. Chandler Jones is a very very good player but he probably would be around the tenth most important player on the Patriots. You cant pay every player their max value.
Maybe they thought they could get similar production out of Long, with increased snaps for Sheard/Flowers, and allowed them to add some draft capital in a year they had their first round pick stolen from them?
I think others addressed this question, but I wanted to add something.
If they viewed Cooper as a lottery pick, that just reinforces that he was a poor inclusion in the trade. Cooper does not play a premium position, he is not especially cheap, and the Patriots only control him for a year. There wasn't a lot of upside.
OL Jonathan Cooper was claimed by the #Browns, source said.Hard to say how much the foot injury set him back. He was shaping up to be a starter prior to that and then sort of disappeared. Not like Cooper being injured is a big shock or anything based on his track record, nor does it change your point about the ceiling on Cooper's value, but Im not sure it was necessarily a failure in scouting.
Smaller error bars, yes, but I think they're still relatively large in football - especially when you start looking at different schemes.
I agree with the bolded - I think they thought that Cooper either would translate to their scheme better or they could fix something. But they were wrong and he failed. I think it's fair to count that as a negative on the deal.
I don't think we can even say that though - it's possible that they were right - but the timing of his injury meant that he wouldn't useful enough this year to offset the increase in pick for letting him go. Now, him getting hurt shouldn't be too surprising, and the fact that he had only one year left hurt, and that definitely counts against them.
FWIW, there basically was no "before the injury." He got hurt in the first padded practice of camp. He was running with the "ones" then, but Mason / Kline / Jackson weren't healthy at that point.
We don't have access to all the information, true. The information we do have - Cooper lost his job in Arizona, and he was cut despite not being on the injury report, the cut not saving any money, and the Pats only having one other backup interior OL - makes it look pretty bad.
OK, it looks like, because Cooper was claimed, the Pats get an offset for the prorated amount of the rest of his 2016 salary, which is 675K. They're still on the hook for 5/17 of that salary and Cooper's full roster bonus. So they do save $470K with Cleveland claiming him, but now they're paying him almost $2 MM to play for someone else.
Makes me wonder if the Pats feel that either Jackson or, less likely, Vollmer are decent bets to return after the next game when both are eligible.
