PHLY Philadelphia Eagles Podcast - Darius Cooper continues to impress at Eagles training camp

Episode Date: August 16, 2025

Darius Cooper continued to impress at Philadelphia Eagles training camp #nfl #dariuscooper #eagles #phlysports Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew Greenwood on the outside. Who do you like to make the team better? Oh, this is an EJ question. Darius Cooper as the six wide receiver or Harry Nickerson or Tariq Castro, Tric Castro Fields, as the six cornerback. I'm going to power rank them. And I'll also give you a little tier skip here. Darius Cooper, tier one, I think he's on the team.

I think he could be the fifth wide receiver. I think he's had that strong of a training camp. From there, I think to- Do you think he's going to be the fifth wide receiver? Well, just as of today. Maybe he's got a little work to do, but let's say you got to do the roster today. If him and Anaya Smith both make the team, I still think that Darius Cooper offers more to them offensively.

So I guess in that, to answer your question, yes, I think you'd be the fifth wide receiver in that regard. As Fran talked about the other day, I hope whatever he offers, though, is not bubble screens. No, he's an interesting player. I mean, do you want to do the Darius Cooper thing? What is the Darius Cooper thing? Oh, well. I want to just, you know, wax poetic about Darius.

Cooper. Well, we do have a diehard sale going on right now at all p.hly.com. And if you sign up for that discounted price, my guy over here has his first feature of the week. He's already writing features one week in. The man from Tarleton State, Darius Cooper. What did you find out about him? Yeah, so I talked to his college coach at Tarleton State, Todd Whitten. Where was Tarleton State? It is a few hours outside of the DFW area. It's in Stevensville, Texas. Okay. Small town in Texas.

What I learned is that Darius Cooper is kind of a rare, a rarity in that he was an FCS standout with great grades. There was really no limiting factor for him to be in the FCS, especially after a breakout redshirt sophomore season, get a really good game against TCU where he was a lone bright spot for Tarleton State. And his head coach even thought, there's no way we're going to keep this guy. He is going to transfer to a big school. He had plenty of opportunities to do.

do so, Darius Cooper decided to stay at Tarleton State. I think he trusted the program that he was in and felt he owed them that loyalty. From there though, he goes undrafted in the draft, or he goes undrafted, and I think that's kind of the cost of being at an FCS school. But the result is that like he kind of is one of these diamonds in the rough who flew under the radar, didn't get invited to the combine, he was a zero star recruit and he is an unconventional receiver. That's brutal by the way.

Give him one star. One star? Yeah, you can't even find him in the... That doesn't signify that you think the player is amazing. Let's give him one star. Can't even find him in the recruiting database. He had one offer from Tarleton State coming out of high school. He was a dual threat quarterback in high school.

Zero star, like, you're telling the player, stop playing football, basically. Well, fortunately for Darius Cooper, he didn't take their advice. He is an unconventional receiver. I feel like 20 years ago, he would have played running back, but he is built like a running back. He's 5-11. He's almost 220 pounds. But the thing about him is he's got long arms and strong hands. And that's something that even Devante Smith,

Devante Smith called this guy a freak of nature, which is high praise coming from Devante Smith. But he's got a combination of long arms and strong hands. He can make plays down the field because of those things. And yeah, I do think that this is really, I mean, again, I think sometimes through training camp we can overstate things, but I do think that this guy has a lot more upside than what you would have expected based off of his player profile.

I think that he, I think the Eagles may have a player here that is going to have an NFL career kind of from out of nowhere. Yeah, I mean, I'm excited. I mean, I thought what we saw from him in that first preseason game was awesome. And that's some good background from you. You know who that reminds me a little bit of?

Quinion Mitchell. Now, obviously, Quignan was playing Division I football. I think more people have heard of Toledo than Carleton State. But Quineau Mitchell was in the same spot where I think he could have gotten a lot of NIL money. Wasn't Nick Saban on the record saying he was our top guy? Yes, Nick Sabin was on the record saying that.

and I talked to Jason Candle, his head coach, maybe this is a trend that I'm developing here, talking to these guys' coaches. And yeah, Jason Candle talked about the fact that Quinyan turned down opportunities to go elsewhere because of a loyalty to Toledo. Now, his situation was a little different. He had a gray shirt coming out of high school, which basically he was not academically eligible.

I think he wanted to repay the loyalty that Toledo showed him back to the school. Again, Darius Cooper, everything you hear about him, it's kind of funny. It's like, he's even more loyal. Well, it's just like every, like, every Eagles coach has to slip in that he is also a great person. You know, it's like they can't help themselves. They like, they gush about like he's a high character guy, hard worker, very mature. And I think you are kind of seeing him take this opportunity in stride probably because of those attributes. Well, I'm excited to watch him play tomorrow.

It seems like, yeah, I mean, he could be the fifth wide receiver and he might even graduate next year. Yeah. If John Dotson gets a nice offer and moves elsewhere with, uh, with, with, Ronnie Wilson getting some blocking snaps as well.