WR Amari Cooper (9.7.23)

Did you get to the place that you wanted to be for the start of the season? 

“In terms of what?”

 

Conditioning? 

“Oh, yeah, conditioning, health. I feel good, I’m ready to go.”

 

Just follow up on the Kansas City game, is it good for you to get in that game?

“Yeah, I think so. You know, just to get a feel for playing in an actual game again. The offseason is long between the last game of the season and the first game of the regular season, so pretty long layoff. In other sports like basketball and stuff, you got summer league, different types of things to get accustomed to actual games. So, we had the preseason.”

 

When you saw the schedule come out, what did you think about playing all three AFC North teams in the first four weeks? 

“I didn’t think much of it, to be honest. We got to play somebody and also we have to play them at some point in the season. It doesn’t really matter to me when we play them.”

 

You don’t think that adds any pressure or urgency to the first month? 

“No. Like I said, the way my brain works, we have to play them anyway at some point. So, it doesn’t matter to me how it’s scrambled. We both get the same amount of time to prepare.”

 

How close do you think the offense is to being as good as it can be this year? 

“Judging from a standpoint of not playing any games yet, obviously I would be super optimistic. I think we’re looking good. I think we got a lot of pieces in play, you know, a lot of weapons on the outside. Obviously, the running game is very good. We got the pieces, so we just got to really wait and see.”

 

The Bengals made a couple of changes this offseason in their secondary. Just what type of challenge does facing a team in week one where maybe you don’t have a lot of film on their new personnel? 

“Oh the film’s there, you’re going to find it. Whether you have to go back to college and watch those guys games or the team they previously played for, the film is definitely there. You get a good feel of those guys’ tendencies that we already know, obviously what we’re going up against as far as scheme, and they kind of have an idea – that’s what football is about. We know them, they know us, they’re in our division. So, there’s really not that many secrets. You just got to go out there and execute.”

 

A lot of the talk has been on the Bengals wide receiving core. Do you feel like your receiving core is getting overlooked a little bit in this game? 

“I don’t know. I haven’t really been focused on what the media has been saying, so I can’t righteously judge if we’re getting overlooked or not.”

 

Is this a secondary you think you can exploit? 

“I think I can exploit every secondary. So that’s kind of a rhetorical question.”

 

Do you feel like you have a pretty good idea of what this new offense is going to look like when you guys put it out there on Sunday? Or are you sort of just as curious as everybody else to see how it’s actually going to come together? 

“I’ll be lying if I said I didn’t know what the offense is going to look like. I mean, we all get the game plan, we all get the first 15. We haven’t gotten that yet. But the huge part of preparation is to actually know the game plan. So of course I know what the offense is going to look like.”

 

But I mean, in terms of if it’s going to look as explosive as you guys hope it’s going to look and it’s going to function as efficiently as you hope it will, is there some unknown about that? 

“Of course. Like Coach (Nick) Saban said, ‘I don’t have a crystal ball.’ I don’t know. But like I said before, we got the pieces. I mean, every team thinks that they have the pieces. We practice well, we prepare well. But we’ll just have to wait and see. We just have to wait and see.”

 

How much different do you think it will look from it did last year? Not from an execution standpoint, but from whatever Kevin’s (Stefanski) calling maybe formation. Why is that? 

“I’m sure Coach has made tweaks. That’s what it’s all about, right? Getting better from year to year. So, some things would definitely be different, but a lot more will probably be the same. I don’t know. You got to ask Kevin, man. Ask Kevin, what he’s doing? What he’s cooking up?”

 

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