Are the Cowboys second-guessing their decision to trade a first-round pick for Amari Cooper?

It sure sounds like it.

A column on Wednesday by Sports Illustrated’s Mike Fisher, who is well-connected within the Cowboys organization, breathed new life into a narrative that’s been gaining momentum (again) for the past year.

Simply put, Cooper hasn’t been consistent in Dallas and the Cowboys are having some of the same reservations about Cooper that the Raiders did a little under two years ago.

“So Amari Cooper is plagued by a lack of ‘competitiveness and fire,’ an inability to be ‘the No. 1 guy’’ and ignorance as how to “play the position in all aspects, including ‘competitiveness,” Fisher wrote on the Cooper situation in Dallas.

“We could try to dismiss this criticism by noting that the author is the former NFL quarterback David Carr. Whose brother is Derek Carr. Who plays for the Raiders team that gave up on Cooper and in the process seemingly spread rumors about his ‘lack of desire.’”

“Or we can report an inside-The-Star truth: As Broaddus suggests, there are Cowboys decision-makers who are raising the same questions that Carr is noting. That Amari’s flaws – to put them into one sentence, ‘a passive-aggressiveness off the field and a lack of aggressiveness on it’ – are very real… and that before the Jones family starts writing checks of $16 mil or $18 mil or $20 mil to Amari Cooper, they’d like to get some answers to these very real questions.”

So maybe Cooper’s issue in Oakland wasn’t the quarterback, or the coaching, or even the organization.

Talented as he is, maybe the issue has always been him.

twitter: @raidersbeat