The 2024 NFL Draft is getting close, making it an excellent time to highlight some of the class' best players with scouting reports. Each report will include strengths, weaknesses and background information.
Here's our report on Edgerrin Cooper.
Cooper is one of the most explosive LB prospects in the 2024 draft class with his sudden twitchy movement, instant acceleration and elite closing burst and speed. He is a long, lean, well-proportioned LB. He has an outstanding athletic profile with explosive suddenness, hip-core flexibility and reactive trigger. That gives him a playmaking dimension from sideline to sideline with dynamic play speed and range.
Cooper has elite explosiveness, which also showed up as a blitzer, where his accelerating burst, especially off the edge with a longer runway, was a challenge and mismatch for most running backs. Cooper has arguably the most desirable combination of length and athleticism of any LB in the 2024 draft class.
While he needs to get stronger and improve his overall key and diagnose, his alignment versatility and playmaking dimension will get him on the field, particularly in sub defenses, with the traits and skill set to develop into a complete and multi-dimensional three-down LB. Still, my sense is that it will be a process that will take some time.
While Cooper’s tape is impressive regarding tier athleticism and dynamic explosive movement, what you didn’t see a lot of throughout his tape was physicality and stack and shed in the box to make plays in the run game, and that is what will likely keep him off the field early in his career in base defenses in normal down and distance situations.
Cooper played four years at Texas A&M after coming out of high school in Louisiana as four-star recruit. He became a starter in 2022 and in 2023 was a consensus First Team All-American.
In 2023, Cooper was consistently deployed as a spy versus a mobile QB. In Texas A&M man coverage concepts, Cooper matched up to running backs and TE. Cooper lined up in the box (the high percentage of his snaps) and outside the box, depending on the defensive call and the offensive formation – Cooper had an outstanding game versus LSU, where you saw all of his explosive traits.
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