Paul Bretl | 5/21/2025
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Coming off a very impressive rookie season, what is next for Packers’ linebacker Edgerrin Cooper as he heads into his second NFL season?
If you ask Jeff Hafley, it’s all about consistency.
“Consistency,” Hafley said when asked about Cooper. “We talked and sometimes joked about he might’ve had that gap, but he made the play over there, right? Like there was a toss run over there that instead of going over the top of the blocker, somehow he ran underneath the blocker and still made a TFL.
“Now it’s getting the details down. Now it’s lining up exactly where he needs to line up and doing it over and over and over again because then he’s gonna show up faster and he’s going to make more plays and he’s going to become a more consistent player.”
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From the moment that Cooper stepped onto the practice field last summer, his speed, athleticism, and playmaking potential were all evident. However, like any first-year player, there was a learning curve that had to be navigated when it came to making the jump from college to the NFL level.
This includes learning a new, and often more advanced playbook, adjusting to the play speed and strength, along with the preparation during the week that goes into actually playing the game on Sunday.
At times, extending this learning curve for Cooper were injuries that he had to navigate. Cooper would miss valuable reps during training camp and in preseason games due to being sidelined. He missed three regular-season games as well, and even when he was on the practice field at times, as a limited participant, that hindered what Cooper could do and the number of reps available to him.
“This Year 2 for him, he knows what it’s going to take,” Hafley said. “He knows what he has to do now to stay healthy because as much as we talked about not having him on the field last year, he was injured quite a bit, where he missed a lot of time and didn’t practice and couldn’t play.
“Now he knows what it’s going to take to stay healthy in this long season and you can tell he’s dedicated that time into caring for his body and changed his body and now when you sit with him in that room it’s, I mean, he’s locked in and he’s focused.”
During the latter portion of the 2024 season, Cooper returned from an injury in Week 15, and at that point, all of those banked reps and time in the meeting rooms that had accumulated over the previous months seemed to come together for him.
From Weeks 15-18, no linebacker had a higher PFF grade than Cooper. During that span, he also recorded the ninth-most quarterback pressures, the fifth-most stops, and his 5.4 yards per catch allowed was the fifth-lowest. Cooper was also just one of six linebackers to record an interception over that stretch of games.
Twice as a rookie, Cooper was named the NFC’s Defensive Player of the Week and he was named the NFC’s Rookie of the Month in December as well.
“Just the way he worked and attacked learning and working on his craft every day, it was really impressive,” said linebackers coach Sean Duggan about Cooper. “And, you know, you saw a payoff. He got better and better throughout the year.
“Right now, he’s working really hard, and he looks good moving around. 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.”
Cooper was listed at 230 pounds last season, but Hafley mentioned that after the offseason, he is up around the 240-pound mark currently.
As good as Year 1 was for Cooper, oftentimes it is in Year 2 where players make their biggest jump. That comes from the experience they’ve gained as rookies, having a full offseason to work on their craft, and the continuity of being within the same system for a second season.
The skill set that Cooper possesses can result in some big plays for the Packers’ defense, but for Hafely, it also affords him quite a bit of flexibility as he puts together game plans because there is a lot that he can ask of Cooper, which then impacts what Hafley asks of the defenders around him.
“Now he knows what he’s doing,” Hafley added. “You’re first rookie year you’re kind of in survival mode a little bit too. So he just needs to be more consistent. He’s gotta stay healthy and continue to improve and he’s a guy that we’re really excited about because he can do a lot of different things too.”