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If All Goes According to Plan, Darius Cooper Won’t Catch Many Passes this Season
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This is a good story. A classic underdog sports story:
The guy earned it with his camp and preseason performances. The injury to Johnny Wilson created the opportunity and he took it, beating out Ainias Smith for the WR4/5 job on a loaded Eagles team that added John Metchie late in August.
At the risk of sounding like a miserab, the truth of the matter is that Cooper probably won’t do much this year. You hope he doesn’t do much, because if he does, it means one of A.J. Brown or DeVonta Smith got hurt, providing more snaps and more targets for the guys down the depth chart. That’s the reality of the situation in 2025. There isn’t much of a pass-catching role for WR4 or WR5.
Going back to last season, Eagles quarterbacks threw the ball 448 times. Brown and Smith caught 186 of those passes. Dallas Goedert, Saquon Barkley, and Jahan Dotson were next on the list, with 52, 43, and 33 targets. Then there was Grant Calcaterra with 30 targets, Kenny Gainwell at 22, and way down at 8th and 9th Wilson with 15 targets and Smith with 9. Parris Campbell, Britain Covey, Will Shipley, and John Ross combined for 22 targets, and this all includes passes thrown by Kenny Pickett and Tanner McKee as well.
There’s just not much room for use in this offense. Brown, Smith, and Goedert will get more than 50% of the targets. Dotson was WR3 and played 674 snaps but was only targeted 43 times. And further down the list, Wilson played 369 snaps while receiving 15 targets, so he was only thrown to at a four percent rate. Everything else was blocking or route running, the dirty work that coaches appreciate.
Then, at the risk of burying the lede, you had 345 rushing attempts for league-leader Saquon Barkley, plus 150 for Hurts and 75 for Kenny G. The Birds ran the ball at a roughly 60/40 clip en route to a Super Bowl victory.
So it’s not to shit on Cooper, or go Negadelphia on a cool story, it’s about setting realistic expectations for year #1. The Eagles ran 11 personnel (three receivers) 61.4% of the time, which was 18th last season. But they weren’t a four-receiver team at all. They ran 12 personnel (two tight ends) at a top-ten rate and then filled in the gaps with 21 and 22 personnel. There aren’t a lot of times when they’re gonna line up in empty set to throw, or put four or five pass catchers out there at all, and when they do it’s definitely not going to be with 4 or 5 receivers. They’ll use a tight end or two, and probably a running back.
It is what it is. Darius Cooper? Great story. Will he have a big impact? Hopefully not, if everything goes according to plan.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com