I just went through the first half of the Cheetahs game and it is still pretty prevalent.
5 minutes into the game he throws a forward pass attempting to offload. This situation there was probably something on but it was a pretty low percentage pass.
28.50 in he steps through a few tackles and then just dumps the ball on the ground behind him when being tackled. This one Quirk managed to pick up cleanly but it was unnecessary.
15 seconds later Cooper has the ball again and flings a pass back when he's going into a tackle that is picked up on the bounce by Holmes well behind the advantage line.
29.45 he shovels the ball back to Holmes while being held in a tackle and it just results in the Reds breakdown being 5m back from where it could have been.
10 seconds after this he throws a flick pass to Davies who is marked with nowhere to run and he has no choice but to fling it back in.
I think this is a major weakness of his game. You look how many excellent passes he threw in the Cheetahs game and how many people he put through gaps but he keeps trying to keep the ball alive at all costs far too often. I agree that he is taking the ball into contact more often than he used to but shoveling the ball out the back when he is under pressure or being tackled still happens too
often.
Firstly, claiming that he is putting Taps under pressure by forcing passes is rubbish. You are just looking for excuses to agree with Deans, the fact that A. Finger had been betteroutside of Cooper hints that Taps really was out of form.
Secondly, not all of the cases you highlighted are him offloading in a risky manner with static support in my book.
1) 5 minutes is a forced pass that was on but poor execution. Quade takes on those plays which is why his error rate is a bit higher than other players. Player was running in support and overlap was on, so it was not static and the support player was in a much, much better position than Cooper (no defender). Myself, I'd prefer he hold that one as getting it around the players back was a little low percentage.
2) 28:50 looks like a dropped ball more than a forced offload. He was looking for an offload with support which was there, but looks like he was in two minds and lost it. Poor ball security. I would say that the Cooper pre-2013 just would've thrown it straight out, this time he stopped and considered.
3) 15 seconds later is a switch pass, not an offload. And it looks like a Cheetahs player got a hand on it. Again, no issues, not an offload.
4) 29:45 - no problem with this. Holmes is a support player who actually offloads to CFS who gets driven back. If Holmes took the ball to ground, there's no loss. Holmes was not static and was moving forward and looked like he called for the ball, Cooper was in a weak position in contact and his arm was free. Zero problem with Cooper's offload, lots of issues with Holmes who went in too high and then forced the pass to CFS. A fly half offloading to a prop in support is normally not an issue.
5) Flick pass to Davies was a bit wild, I'll give you. This one, I had no real issues with to be honest, a little better execution and it's fine. Not less than a 50/50 for someone like Cooper. The result was good and Davies was not in a worse position than Cooper when he received the ball.
What Cooper did in the Cheetahs game was more than he had done in the prior 2 to 3 games combined, sadly enough, yet in very few of them was the support static and in a worse case than Cooper. In fact, only in two was the play and support really static (2 and 5) and only in one (2) was the person in worse position that Cooper who received the ball (excluding the poor play from Holmes which made it so).
Blaming Cooper for Taps form is still a long bow that I just don't see how you can justify. I can still vividly recall Cooper putting Taps into a yearning hole with a ball into Taps' breadbasket just for Taps to drop it cold, and that's when I knew Taps was really struggling. I fail to see how Cooper is responsible there.