Ranking Every Player on Packers’ Roster, No. 3: Edgerrin Cooper

The Green Bay Packers will take a 90-player roster to the field for their first practice of training camp on July 23.

In a Packers On SI tradition, we are ranking every player on the roster. This isn’t just a list of the best players. Rather, we take talent, contract, draft history, importance of the position and depth at the position into consideration.

More than the ranking, we hope you learn a little something about every player on the roster.

No. 3: LB Edgerrin Cooper

Edgerrin Cooper was a second-round pick and the first linebacker selected in the 2024 NFL Draft. He played sparingly to start the season and missed three games late in the season. And yet, his production was so overwhelming that he was selected to the All-Rookie Team and even got an All-Pro vote.

Cooper played 491 snaps, which was only 12th on the team. That amounted to 45.1 percent playing time. He finished sixth on the team with 77 tackles, first with 13 tackles for losses, fifth with four passes defensed, fifth with 3.5 sacks and tied for second with four turnover plays (one interception, one forced fumble, two fumble recoveries).

What if he had played 90 percent of the snaps? It’s not as simple as double the playing time, double the production, but it does add some context. That would have meant 154 tackles, seven sacks, 26 tackles for losses and eight passes defensed. He would have finished fourth in the NFL in tackles and first in tackles for losses.

The last player with 100-plus tackles and 22-plus tackles for losses was Jamir Miller, who had 101 tackles and 22 TFLs for the Browns in 2001. No player has ever had 150 tackles and 20 tackles for losses; Hall of Famers Ray Lewis and Brian Urlacher were the closest with 19 TFLs.

Dating to 1999, Cooper is one of nine players who had at least 75 tackles and 13 TFLs as a rookie. The other eight started double-digits games; Cooper started only four. Of the seven off-the-ball linebackers on the list, Lavonte David was the last with 139 tackles and 20 TFLs in 2012.

“It was really, really cool,” new linebackers coach Sean Duggan, who assisted Anthony Campanile last year, said before the start of OTAs. “You know, you came in from A&M and, like a lot of rookies, everything’s brand new, just like it was for me last year. So, it was cool to be in kind of a similar place where it’s like, ‘All right, everything’s kind of new and fresh for us for the first time.’

“Just the way he worked and attacked learning and working on his craft every day, it was really impressive. And you saw a payoff, right? He got better and better throughout the year. He’s in a great head space where he’s eager, he’s ready to get going. But he understands we still got a long way to go, and there’s a lot of things he can still get better at.”

While Cooper doesn’t meet the contract part that we factor into these rankings, he is the best player on the defensive front seven, one of the best young players in the NFL and potentially the game-wrecking player the Packers have lacked on the defensive side of the ball since Charles Woodson and Clay Matthews helped the team win the Super Bowl in 2010. He is a good player with a chance to be legitimately great.

Cooper was a two-time NFC Defensive Player of the Week and closed the regular season by being named NFC Defensive Player of the Month. That span was highlighted by four tackles for losses at Minnesota. He was the first player since 2000 with 13 TFLs and 10 tackles on special teams.

“He can eat up the grass really fast,” defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley said late last season. “Sometimes, he might not be in the right position, but he has that ability to make up for it. So, the more he learns and the better he gets, he’s going to get better and better and better.”

Cooper played more than 71 percent of the defensive snaps in only two games last year.

“The more he practices and he can stay healthy, he’s a guy you want to have on the field,” Hafley said.

After playing at about 220 pounds at times last year, he was up to about 240 for the offseason practices.

“He still looks like he’s moving as good as he did a year ago,” coach Matt LaFleur said. “So, I’m really excited about him, just his understanding of the detail of what he’s supposed to do and those around him, I think are going to allow him to play that much faster, which is pretty exciting.”

Cooper said he focused on “eating right” after the season. The explosiveness that highlighted his game last season is still there, he said. The added strength should help him become a better tackler; of 70 linebackers with 450-plus snaps, Cooper had the ninth-highest missed-tackle percentage.

“I just wanted to feel powerful,” he said. “I felt like the explosiveness was there, but there ain’t no problem being a little bit bigger as long as you can move the same. That’s how I felt about it.”

Cooper has a couple nicknames. One is “Cowboy Coop.” The other is “Frosty.” The native of Covington, La., picked up the “Frosty” moniker from special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia.

“It’s the name of my horse,” Cooper said last season. He has a second horse named Cinco.