Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper may be free agent wide receiver Riley Cooper before long. At least, that is what ESPN writer Ashley Fox believes. On Thursday, Fox wrote about how Cooper stood alone at practice and did not speak with any of his 89 teammates who were on the field. Clearly, there are very few people who are willing to move past the 25-year-old’s racist outburst.
Because of where we are at in the calendar sports year, there has been very little to discuss aside from Cooper. That may be magnifying the severity of the situation in the media, but the Eagles would react this way regardless of how slow a news week we are having. Cooper is a person that they considered a friend, and LeSean McCoy’s recent comments made it clear that many players no longer feel that way.
[Video: Riley Cooper uses racial slur at Kenny Chesney concert]
Michael Vick, who tried to forgive Cooper for his mistake shortly after the video surfaced on Wednesday, acknowledged that his willingness to move on was not contagious.
“I tried to defuse it for a day, but I can’t make it go away,” he told Fox. “I can’t do that. It’s too big. I’m not going to let this divide the locker room. We have football games to win. We have to pull together.”
Therein lies the problem for Chip Kelly in his first season as an NFL coach. The Eagles are in desperate need of receiving help after Jeremy Maclin went down with a torn ACL, but will the presence of Cooper do more harm than good? We hear players on successful teams harping on the concept of locker room unity all the time, and that is not a coincidence. If some Eagles players feel that they have a racist walking among them, the tension could trickle down to the entire locker room.
And if Kelly does decide to cut Cooper, will he find a home elsewhere? Cooper’s comment had nothing to do with the Eagles. Players on other NFL teams feel the same way about the remark that the Eagles do, so what team would even consider him worth signing?
According to Dallas Cowboys safety Will Allen, Cooper has become a target for opposing players.
“Absolutely. I’m just going to be honest,” Allen when asked if there is a bullseye on Cooper, via ESPNDallas.com. “You don’t want to see that somebody is going to be mad and perpetuate the negativity. I don’t think it’s something that we should do. I’m sure it will happen.”
Cooper made a mistake. We are all guilty of making them quite frequently, but this is the type of mistake that can stick with a person permanently. The Eagles may believe Cooper didn’t mean to say what he did, but the question is will they believe him when he says that is not how he feels? Maybe we’re being overdramatic because the controversy is still fresh. Or, maybe this is the type of crucial mistake that leads to the downfall of a career.
