Monday contained exactly the type of excitement that football fans needed to keep their sports appetite satisfied in this temporarily sports-less world.
While we’re still left chomping at our nails over the eventual destination of Tom Brady -- which is probably a good thing, considering the more spread out the breaking news, the longer we’ll have to stay entertained -- the futures of a couple offensive stars were revealed after big news surfaced.
After the Cowboys placed an exclusive franchise tag on Dak Prescott to the tune of around $33 million for 2020, the likelihood that Amari Cooper would become a free agent increased largely due to the new CBA guidelines.
However, the Cowboys avoided that by signing their star receiver to a massive five-year, $200 million extension.
Elsewhere, Stefon Diggs’ cryptic tweets were not just teasing speculative fans but instead was hinting at a trade to the Bills, who snagged him from the Vikings for a slew of picks.
Let’s dive into how these two deals affected the NFL landscape by picking out the winners and losers as fallout from the action.
Winners
Amari Cooper
He’s the highest-paid wide receiver in the NFL. That’s one clear factor in determining that Amari Cooper came out of today as a huge winner.
But he also made a choice that reflected his true desires that fulfilled more than just his monetary wishes.
Cooper gets to continue his career under Mike McCarthy and a quarterback who he has found a lot of chemistry with in just a short time, assuming that Prescott is able to come to a long-term agreement with the Cowboys.
Dak Prescott
The other thing that the Cooper deal likely indicates is that the Cowboys really wanted to keep together their highly successful QB-WR tandem for the foreseeable future, meaning that a long-term extension could be expedited as a result of this trade.
It seems as if this is already the case, according to Calvin Watkins of the Dallas Morning News. Watkins reports that the Cowboys have offered their quarterback an extension that would be more expensive than both Jared Goff’s and Carson Wentz’s extremely lucrative deals last year.
One of the largest contracts in NFL history and your top receiver back in town? Sounds like a win to me.
Buffalo Bills, Josh Allen and the Bills Mafia
Stefon Diggs gives Josh Allen a proven, true No. 1 wide receiver for the first time in his career. And although it cost the Bills four picks including a first rounder, their abundance of cap space and draft capital makes this move easier to stomach.
It doesn’t appear that the famous Bills fan base had too much trouble stomaching this move, though.
For Allen, someone of Diggs’ caliber is really going to help him develop and possibly reveal whether or not he’s truly cut out to be a franchise quarterback, which would help the Bills organization as a whole. And the move didn’t cost them all that much in terms of their salary cap, given that Diggs makes $6 million less per year than Amari Cooper now does despite arguably a better track record overall.
Oh yeah... Tom Brady is gone, too!
Losers
New England Patriots
Hindsight 20-20, but seeing Cooper, Diggs and DeAndre Hopkins land elsewhere may have influenced Tom Brady’s inability to come to an agreement with the Patriots. Or maybe it didn’t influence his decision at all. Who knows.
What we do know is that the Patriots missed out on three top wide receiver targets to bolster their uninspiring corps, even if Cooper was never really in their sights. Diggs seemed to be the perfect guy to make a move for and they didn’t do enough to pull it off.
It’s a weird thought to stomach, but Belichick may be leading a completely rebuilding offense in 2020.
Philadelphia Eagles
Like the Patriots, the Eagles missed out on some great opportunities to add to Carson Wentz’s supporting cast. They also missed out on free agent cornerback Byron Jones, who was considered to be the alternate free agent priority for the Birds.
The wide receiver pool is slimming for the Eagles, and though their plan may have been to go through the draft to make these moves, they may have been looking at trades and free agency as an alternative route.
Besides, they also have to go against Cooper for the next five seasons, and he’s someone who has given them trouble game after game.
Washington Redskins
Washington offered more money to Cooper than Dallas did, and Cooper’s new contract with Dallas is the most expensive among all wide receivers. This means that the Redskins really, really wanted to add Cooper to their offensive ranks. Despite that, Cooper didn’t want to play in Washington, perhaps because of the negative perception some have of the franchise in how it treats its players amid the Trent Williams drama, or maybe because he simply wanted to stay in Dallas.
Whatever the case, they missed out on him and now have to face him frequently for a solid chunk of years.
To Be Determined
Dallas Cowboys
Yes, the Cowboys kept Cooper in town. But they are dishing out massive portions of their salary cap to Cooper, Elliott and Prescott to keep together this core. Despite a very strong offensive showing for the team last season, the team as a whole struggled and finished 8-8.
Maybe a new coach will change things for Dallas and this is the exact team they’ll run with. But it’s also worth noting that they lost Byron Jones, will likely lose Robert Quinn to free agency and will not be able to do much to vastly improve upon their defense from last season.
Is spending this much on the offense the right move? Are they even sure they can keep Dak Prescott in house with an extension? There are still questions to be answered in Dallas.
Stefon Diggs
The one clear win Diggs gets out of this is that he no longer will play with Kirk Cousins and the Vikings, a partnership and team that he couldn’t quite establish good chemistry with last season. There was a lot of drama that took away from his performance, earned him fines and led to the conjecture that he’d eventually be moved.
But will he find happiness in Buffalo? Josh Allen is still a very raw and unproven quarterback who struggles with inaccuracy and decision making as much as the next guy. If Diggs doesn’t link up with Allen early and often, will the same frustration build inside of him that plagued the end of his run in Minnesota?
Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings got a first round pick in return for Stefon Diggs, which they can use in this year’s draft to replace him with one of the many highly touted receiving options available. Diggs’ contract was fairly team-friendly, though, for a proven option, and losing that talent without a guarantee that they’ll be able to replace it leaves some room for concern when evaluating their side of the deal.
The move freed up some space for them, but also left them with some dead cap in Diggs' absence.
However, they eliminated locker room tension, still have a stud WR in Adam Thielen available for use and will likely continue to commit to the ground game for the bulk of their offense. With Dalvin Cook’s contract coming to an end soon, though, it doesn’t hurt to ponder whether or not the Vikings are clear on their future as a franchise.
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