One of the more curious attempts to place a positive spin on the Cowboys’ salary dump of Amari Cooper in Cleveland has been the suggestion that it now opens the door for CeeDee Lamb to be the guy, to become Dak Prescott’s go-to receiver in 2022.
The cynical side of me would say that in order for Lamb to be that go-to receiver, he will have to park himself between the hash marks about four yards downfield directly in front of tight end Dalton Schultz. Putting that aside, it’s just interesting to me that it has been made to sound as though Lamb has been kept under wraps or that the loss of a four-time Pro Bowl receiver from the opposite side of the formation will elevate Lamb’s game.
Mostly what it will do is increase the amount of double teams that Lamb faces, at least until Michael Gallup gets up to full speed sometime during the regular season or until we see the finished product of this offense following free-agency and the draft.
I don’t mean to be someone who diminishes Lamb’s abilities or his impact on this team. If you were one of the loyal listeners of the gone-and-mostly-forgotten ESPN Dallas, you might recall my picking Lamb on the national morning show’s mock draft. Sadly, I got up caught in a local outburst of K’Lavon Chaisson fever and picked the LSU linebacker in The Dallas Morning News’ draft projections. That aside, Lamb is a proven talent whose sometimes outrageous one-handed grabs are slightly offset by his 16 dropped passes in his first two seasons (Cooper had six if you are counting).
While neither wide receiver distinguished himself down the stretch last year, and Cooper did have an unfortunate tendency to underproduce in the biggest games, they offered essentially identical production over the last two years. If you think Cooper was taking passes away from Lamb, you probably have the playoff game in mind when Cooper caught six of 10 targets for 64 yards and a touchdown. Lamb, with half as many targets, had one catch for 21 yards.
That was not the normal breakdown over the past two years, however, where Cooper had 234 targets to Lamb’s 231. Lamb managed to gain 8.8 yards per target to Cooper’s 8.5. That difference lies somewhere between subtle and significant. Cooper’s 13-11 advantage in touchdowns basically erases that difference in any evaluation.
For comparison’s sake, Kansas City’s Tyreek Hill checked in at 8.6 yards per target over the last two years while Buffalo’s Stefon Diggs was at 8.4. So clearly Lamb and Cooper found themselves in good company although not quite in the land of Green Bay’s Davante Adams (9.2), the Rams’ Cooper Kupp (9.3) or the man drafted five spots after Lamb.
LSU’s Justin Jefferson, while producing almost 1,000 more yards receiving than Lamb, has averaged 10.3 per target for his first two years. About the only thing that tops that would be the rookie stats of Cincinnati’s Ja’Marr Chase, who checked in at 11.4 per target despite 11 dropped passes. Chase also had 13 touchdowns — as many as Cooper caught the last two years and two more than Lamb.
Past numbers won’t tell us exactly how Lamb will fare in a new offense minus Cooper. The more reliable route runner is gone. The more spectacular player remains. I can’t attach any numbers to this sentiment, but there were at least two games last year where it appeared right away that Lamb really wanted the ball, would do anything to get it, would fight through any arm tackles once he had it… and yet the Dak Prescott/Kellen Moore combination focused elsewhere, either unwilling or uninterested in getting him the football.
I do think we can safely say that exasperation for Cowboys’ fans should disappear. Whether or not Lamb is sharing the huddle with Gallup or a high draft pick or a free agent to be named later, he does have to be the focus of the passing attack. The Cowboys need to understand that entering the fourth quarter with seven points on the scoreboard against Arizona and San Francisco in January is as telling about last year’s offensive approach as all the analytics known to man.
While not suggesting Lamb can handle eight carries a game, the club did show interest in getting him the football in creative ways last season. With Tony Pollard offering the only real outside speed in the backfield, I’m not sure the Cowboys can turn Lamb into the 49ers’ Deebo Samuel but they have to give him the chance to shine in different ways.
But it’s not like he hasn’t been frequently featured in his first two years. The Cowboys shared the wealth between its two best receivers despite the fact that Cooper’s arrival in 2018 dramatically altered the face of the offense and led the team to its only playoff win of The Dak Era.
In paying Gallup and Schultz roughly what the club saved in trading Cooper, this now has to be Lamb’s time. Barring injury, if there is another player with as many targets as Lamb at the end of 2021, something has gone wrong.
Again.
