Riley Cooper's lackluster Eagles era is probably over

The last time Riley Cooper touched the football this season it glanced off his left hand and fell to the turf at MetLife Stadium and the Eagles were forced to punt.

It probably was the last time he was targeted as an Eagle. If so, it was a fitting way to go out.

The Eagles gambled on third down late in the game and Sam Bradford went to Cooper, who had run a post route. The ball was thrown a touch high, but the timing was off. Cooper didn't look back at his quarterback until the last moment and the ball ricocheted off his outstretched hand.

The incomplete pass didn't affect the outcome of the game. The Eagles still won. But it was meaningless, like so many of Cooper's catches over the last two seasons. Never was there an Eagles wide receiver who played so often and made so little impact.

And that's saying something. It could be the epitaph for his tenure in Philadelphia.

Of course, Cooper may end up being remembered most as the poster boy for Chip Kelly's failed culture war. The coach went to bat for the receiver after he was caught on video using a racial slur, and in retrospect it's fair to wonder if it was all worth the risk.

Cooper caught 47 passes for 835 yards and eight touchdowns in 2013 and then signed a four-year, $22.5 million contract the next offseason. But he caught only 55 passes for 577 yards and three touchdowns the next season, despite playing 81 percent of the snaps.

He finished this season with only 21 catches for 327 yards and two touchdowns playing half the time. Including Sunday's game, he had seven games without a catch.

Cooper, to his credit, never stepped out of line again. But in between the lines, his performance didn't warrant the chance Kelly took on alienating a segment of the locker room. There is no definitive way to say if keeping Cooper affected the team over the next three seasons, but there were racially charged comments about Kelly from ex-players and coaches.

Ultimately, for many, Cooper's place on the roster was a constant reminder that DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin were no longer on it.

Cooper wasn't in the NovaCare locker room Monday during media availability as players cleaned out their stalls. He wasn't the only one. Many, understandably, had grown tired of answering questions about Kelly's firing and a disappointing season.

But Cooper, who replaced Maclin after he was lost for the 2013 season, was asked last week if he felt indebted to Kelly.

"It wasn't, I think, Chip," Cooper said. "Chip happened to be the coach after Andy got fired and Maclin got hurt, and then so I had to play in my fourth year. There was no choice. There was no other receivers. . . . And I appreciate Chip letting me go out there and showcase what I can do, and what I can still do."

Most of Cooper's $4.5 million salary next season is not guaranteed, so it's unlikely he'll return. But the Eagles will take a $2.4 million salary-cap hit if the next coach decides it's time to move on. There could be many other casualties.

"I think there's going to be," tight end Zach Ertz said. "Based on Chip's first year to now, there's 11 guys on the roster. So in that perspective, there's going to be a huge turnover. The new coaching staff is going to want [its own] guys. I don't know if guys really realize that now."

Kelly wasn't the first new coach to bring in an assortment of his guys, nor will he be the last. But many of those players often didn't live up to the billing, even bottom-of-the-roster, try-hard character guys.

A high percentage of them had the Oregon connection in common. Six former Ducks - Kiko Alonso, Josh Huff, Taylor Hart, Kenjon Barner, Brandon Bair, and Walter Thurmond - are still on the roster. Overall, Kelly had 13 of his former college players pass through in three seasons.

"It's the whole concept of you've got two guys with the same talent - are you going to bring in somebody you can trust because you've already coached him or are you going to bring in the unknown?" Bair said. "It makes sense."

There's something to be said for comfort - and Kelly brought several assistants and support staffers with him from Oregon, as well - but the Eagles seemed to have an inordinate amount of culture or scheme-fit characters.

Of the Oregon products, Alonso, Huff and Hart were disappointments. Barner and Bair were fine in their roles. And Thurmond blossomed as a safety. But Jeff Maehl, Patrick Chung and the rest of the Ducks castoffs never materialized.

Hart and Bair know that their days could be numbered. They specialize as two-gap defensive lineman and there aren't many NFL coordinators who employ that base run scheme anymore. Bair has played in other systems, though, and said his film would show the new coach that he didn't rest on his connection to Kelly.

"If I was a guy that thought I was just going to ride [Kelly's] coattails, I wouldn't be around," Bair said. "Football is going to expose anybody who can't play the game. It didn't change the way I played."

No one ever doubted Cooper's effort, either. But sometimes effort isn't enough.

jmclane@phillynews.com

@Jeff_McLane