Amari Injury: Could WR Miss Start of Cowboys Camp?

So is this some sort of a ‘set-back’ for Amari Cooper of the Cowboys?

FRISCO - The Dallas Cowboys audience can spin this positively or spin this negatively.

We will stick with the Cowboys’ own viewpoint - stated publicly and privately - that they are “hopeful” that wide receiver Amari Cooper will be ready for the start of training camp as he rehabs from a minor off-season ankle surgery.

“As far as Amari, Amari has the ankle that he’s still working through," Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy told us on Wednesday here inside The Star. “He won’t participate the rest of the minicamp.

“I’m just hopeful he’ll be ready for training camp.”

Some news outlets have taken McCarthy’s remarks as an ominous sign. But Cooper, the team’s No. 1 guy at a position loaded with talent (with CeeDee Lamb and Michael Gallup alongside him), is not dealing with anything “major,” a source tells us.

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NFL Network notes that Cooper is dealing with an "irritation" in his ankle. It has been suggested that this ailment is something new, but in fact, it is our belief that Cooper has essentially been a non-participant during Dallas’ recent on-field work.

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NFL Network adds that Cooper is “unlikely to be able to run for the next two or three weeks,” as rest is merited.

But “three weeks” would still leave three more weeks until the start of Cowboys training camp in Oxnard.

So is this some sort of a “set-back” for Amari Cooper, because rather than a guarantee that he will be healed by late-July, there is simply a “hope” - joined by the virtual certainty that the receiver with three straight 1,000-yard seasons will be ready shortly thereafter for a fourth such season?

That, we suppose, depends on how one wants to spin it.