Derek Carr on Amari Cooper: 'He's one of the best in this league'

Cooper has gotten off to a terrific start in his NFL career.

By Jared Dubin

Oct 27, 2015 at 9:55 pm ET • 1 min read

Through six games, wide receiver Amari Cooper is making the Oakland Raiders look pretty smart for tabbing him with the No. 4 overall pick in this year's draft.

Cooper has 33 catches for 519 yards and three touchdowns, the most recent of which was this 52-yard scamper through the entire Chargers defense last Sunday.

.@AmariCooper9 takes the entire defense on a field trip to the skate park. #ACDC #OAKvsSD https://t.co/X7bUmo3ahG
— NFL (@NFL) October 25, 2015

One person who is very impressed with Cooper so far is his teammate, quarterback Derek Carr. "He's amazing, he's awesome and he's one of the best in this league," Carr said after the game on Sunday, per NFL.com. "Obviously because he's a rookie and hasn't done it for a certain amount of time people won't say that but he's one of the best."

Carr is probably correct in saying that many people would hesitate to put Cooper among the league's best players at his position because of his status as a rookie. But the thing about Cooper is that the book on him since he was at Alabama was that he was the most polished receiver to enter the draft in years -- that he had the polish and route-running ability of a 10-year veteran, only he hadn't played a single game.

Early in the season, that scouting report looks dead on. Cooper is fast, quick, and smooth, and he's seemingly always open. He doesn't drop passes and when he hauls the ball in, he looks to rack up the yards after catch.

And six games into his NFL career, he's 16th in the NFL in receiving yards per game, he has become the first rookie since 1961 to record three 100-plus yard receiving games in his team's first six games of the season, and he is changing the way people in Oakland do math.