Raiders expect an elite wide receiver with Amari Cooper draft pick

OAKLAND - Derek Carr made great strides during his rookie season, cementing his place as the Raiders’ quarterback for years to come. Carr may have taken another leap Thursday, without even stepping on the field.

With their young passer in mind, the Raiders used the No. 4 overall selection in the NFL Draft to acquire something they haven’t had since the days of Rich Gannon flinging the football to Jerry Rice and Tim Brown: an elite wide receiver.

In Alabama’s Amari Cooper, the Raiders got a guy whose epic college production is matched only by his NFL-quality route-running and reading of coverages, according to the scouts.

“He can run a route,” Oakland general manager Reggie McKenzie said after making the pick. “Seems like he can do that with his eyes closed. He’s exceptionally quick, he’s fast and he understands the game. You can tell the guy’s been playing football and playing that position all his life.”

A fact quickly confirmed by Cooper, who explained on a conference call that he started to take his routes and cuts seriously when he was 5 or 6 years old, even before he had played organized football; by the time he joined a youth team in Miami in third grade, he had only to learn the names of the routes.

That team happened to have a couple of good running backs, including the coach’s son, so Cooper tried his hands at wide receiver. He’s never wandered from the position. The Raiders, in essence, are getting an athlete whose entire life has prepared him to catch passes in the NFL.

“It’s unusual when words like polished are thrown out,” Oakland head coach Jack Del Rio said. “But that’s what you see. He’s been lined up all across the board: outside, both sides, inside in the slot, moved around, even lined up in the backfield some. He’s been exposed to a lot and utilized a lot of different ways. He’s run the entire route tree.”

Cooper is fast (4.42 seconds in the 40-yard dash at the scouting combine), but there are other receivers in this draft who can outrace him. He has good size (6-foot-1, 211 pounds), but won’t tower over most NFL cornerbacks.

What set Cooper apart were his technique, his “football IQ” (if you can pardon the cliché) and his college production, the latter being light years ahead of the Raiders’ previous top-10 pick at wide receiver, Darrius Heyward-Bey in 2009.

Alabama has been known as a run-first team for ages, but head coach Nick Saban and offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin – remember him, Raiders fans? – changed the philosophy with Cooper in the arsenal. The Crimson Tide targeted the junior an astounding 178 times in 2014. Cooper caught 124 of those passes (best in the nation) for 1,727 yards (tops among draft-eligible players) and 16 touchdowns (ditto).

Sometimes the college receivers with the biggest numbers are products of their offenses. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Cooper, who is beloved by most NFL analysts.

College Football Focus, which breaks down film of every FBS game, had this to say about Cooper: “He can use his hands at the line to defeat the jam and contact from defensive backs like it’s already instinct. This is something most college receivers struggle with and it takes them a while to learn it in the NFL. Cooper is already a master.”

CFF added this appraisal of Cooper’s mental game: “He also shows a fantastic understanding of defenses and zone coverage, knowing exactly what he’s looking at and when to throttle down to sit in an open space.”

“I’m a wide receiver,” Cooper said. “There are only two ways you can get open at wide receiver, your releases and the top of your route. The whole route-running process is really important. I just focus on it and try to be the best that I can at it so I can create as much separation as I can for my quarterback.”

In other words, Cooper is NFL-ready, maybe the most NFL-ready player on the entire board.

That’s great news to new Raiders offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave, who is charged with adding some zip to an offense that ranked 26th in the NFL with 204.7 passing yards per game last season, 31st in scoring with 253 points and dead last with 30 completions of 20-plus yards.

Carr already had a stable of decent young receivers like Rod Streater, Andre Holmes, Brice Butler and tight end Mychal Rivera, and a proven newcomer in Michael Crabtree. But none of them is a clear No. 1 receiver. The Raiders hope they have found their top dog in Cooper.

The void he seeks to fill goes back for more than a decade. Oakland hasn’t had a 1,000-yard receiver since Rice totaled 1,211 in 2002. That also happens to be the last time the Raiders made the playoffs.

The first two picks of this draft offered no surprises, with a pair of quarterbacks, Florida State’s Jameis Winston and Oregon’s Marcus Mariota, going to Tampa Bay and Tennessee, respectively. When the Jaguars took outside linebacker Dante Fowler at No. 3, the Raiders had at least a couple of strong possibilities: Cooper and Leonard Williams, the USC defensive lineman that some touted as the top talent in the draft.

Surprisingly, trading down might not have been much of an option. McKenzie said he got plenty of calls leading up to the draft, but none when the Raiders were on the clock.

To hear the general manager tell it, Williams wasn’t strongly debated either. The Raiders had targeted Amari Cooper, just as his quarterbacks did 178 times last year.