NFC East Notes: Cowboys, Eagles, Redskins

Cowboys

Cowboys WR Amari Cooper says landing in Dallas after being traded from the Raiders was the “perfect fit” for him. 

“It’s like I was a piece of the puzzle that was needed,” Cooper said via Jon Machota. “Everything around me was needed as well obviously for the puzzle to be complete. It was a great situation, I can only thank God that I was brought here to be a Dallas Cowboy. I could have been on any team, probably even some teams I didn’t want to be on. When I got the call that I was going to be a Dallas Cowboy, I was really excited about that. I think I have a lot of good teammates, a group of core guys that really complement my game well, the playcaller. It just seems like everything fell in place here.”

Cooper said he’s looking forward to what he can do in Dallas with a full offseason to get ready instead of being thrown in midseason after the trade from Oakland. 

“I think I have so much more to prove,” Cooper said. “I think I’m just scratching the surface. I think people haven’t seen half of what I can do out there on the field. I have so many more great plays in me, so much more good football ahead of me. My best football is ahead of me.”

Eagles

Eagles VP of football operations Jake Rosenberg, who manages the team’s salary cap, said the team started planning for QB Carson Wentz‘s extension a year before they were allowed to even start negotiations. 

“We probably start sometime early 2018 trying to prepare for (the Wentz contract),” Rosenberg said via 94WIP’s Eliot Shorr-Parks. “The timing here, up against 2020 which is the last year of the CBA and has it’s own set of rules, is a little tricky and challenging. I think we got a head of this in the sense that we saw this coming. We saw that 2020 because of the rules would make this extra difficult.”

While the 2020 season is not an uncapped year, it is the final year of the current collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and NFL Player’s Association.  That caused some potential obstacles when it came to negotiating a deal with Wentz that would last far beyond 2020. 

“It is the opposite of an uncapped year. It is a capped year with very specific rules that make it more difficult in the way we talk about these cap tricks and little ways we have of creating space and finagling things around. That will be much tougher in 2020,” Rosenberg said. “So we had been preparing for that for a long time. I am proud of that too. This has been on our radar and it hasn’t caught us by surprise.”

Redskins

• According to NBC Sports’ J.P. Finlay, the Redskins and Lions are not closing in on a trade of WR Marvin Jones for WR Josh Doctson, despite internet rumors that surfaced over the weekend. 
• Finlay said the Redskins have had conversations about moving Doctson for more than a year, including at last year’s trade deadline. 
• However, Finlay says Doctson’s value is at its lowest point following Washington’s decision to decline his fifth-year option.