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Alaina Getzenberg, ESPN
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane was sold on wide receiver Amari Cooper almost 10 years ago.
In 2015, when Beane was the assistant general manager at Carolina, he and then-Panthers receiving coach Ricky Proehl went on a predraft visit to see Cooper at Alabama. The two took him out to dinner and worked him out the next day.
Cooper’s reserved personality resulted in Beane and Proehl leaving the dinner thinking, ‘Man, he didn’t like us’ — yet, that wasn’t the case. The next day, Cooper met them bright and early, directed them where to park and greeted them with tape.
“He beat us in there, had the film uploaded,” Beane recalled this week. “We walk into one of their meeting rooms, and you give this guy the clicker, and he was like, at peace. Just talking to us like a coach, ‘This is what I was doing here. This is what he’s got. This is what he’s got. This is why I did this.’ And we sat in there for over an hour, maybe 1:15 … and just watching [him] talk ball.”
The Panthers had the 25th overall pick in that year’s draft, so selecting Cooper — who the then-Oakland Raiders selected fourth overall — wasn’t available. Now, in 2024, Beane decided to trade a 2025 third-round pick and a 2026 seventh-round pick to the Cleveland Browns in exchange for Cooper and a 2025 sixth-round selection.
Bringing in the five-time Pro Bowl receiver was “really just an opportunity to add a guy that adds an experienced, proven, skill set to the group,” as Beane described — at a cost of about $806,667 after the Browns converted everything but the veteran minimum of his $20 million salary in the offseason, a rare find and perfect for the Bills’ limited cap space — $2.9 million prior to the trade, per the NFLPA report.
The Bills will face the Tennessee Titans on Sunday (1 p.m. ET, CBS) and it’s expected that Cooper will get in on the action right away.
“We’ll see, I mean, I would think so, but I want to see, and I want to visit with the coaches again” said Bills coach Sean McDermott on the prospect. While there will be some hurdles in adding the 10-year veteran to the offense six games into the season, Cooper will add an option for quarterback Josh Allen downfield and a new veteran presence to a receiver room that has found mild success this season.
“Knowing what type of caliber of a player that he is excites me,” Allen said. “Another guy in this locker room that, from what I can see so far, and what I’ve been told about him, is all about winning, and is going to do everything that he can to help this team win football games. And you get a group of men in this locker room, that all want the same thing and want to work towards the same goal. That’s a pretty powerful team.”
Practice squad quarterback Mike White was on the Dallas Cowboys when Cooper was traded from the Raiders to the Cowboys in October 2018. White recalled how “awesome” of a teammate Cooper is, and how he’s the “prototypical pro.”
But what he remembers most? “How much our season changed in Dallas once we got him,” White said.
When the Cowboys traded for Cooper, the team was 3-4. While they lost Cooper’s first game on the team, Dallas won the next five and seven of the next eight to end the season.
“Now, I’m not trying to predict that for us,” White said, “but that kind of shows you what he can bring to the table, so I mean, he’s obviously, we all know what he’s capable of, but it’s just, I think it’s the locker room stuff and the stability he can bring that I think can help a lot of the guys.”
On the field, Cooper, 30, will boost a Bills’ offense that, after scoring 30-plus points in each of the first three games of the season, has scored 23 or less in the past three. An area of weakness for Allen and the receiving game is passes downfield.
Allen is completing 29% of his passes 20-plus yards downfield which ranks 23rd in the NFL entering Week 7 — his worst completion percentage on such throws through six games since 2019.
Cooper should directly help with that issue.
“Just his approach to the game first. How he goes about his business, and … his work ethic,” Bills wide receivers coach Adam Henry, who also coached Cooper in Dallas in 2020 and 2021, said of what stood out about Cooper. “Then second of all, just his change of direction, just to be able to change direction and hit a gear. … Once he gets into a zone … he allows the game to come to him, so he has a systematic approach to it. So he doesn’t force it.
“He just believes that ‘I do what I’m supposed to do in the right places,’ that everything will work out, and that’s very rare for receivers.”
Cooper has 15 receiving touchdowns on go routes or deep fades since the start of 2017 — when tracking began on route classifications, ESPN Analytics/NFL Next Gen Stats, the third most in the NFL over that span behind Tyreek Hill and Mike Evans. In the past five seasons, Cooper has 78 receptions (fourth), 2,005 yards (sixth) and 20 receiving touchdowns (sixth) on vertical routes.
Despite Cooper having a down year in Cleveland as part of a struggling Browns offense, his ability to create separation is one of his strengths. Per NGS, Bills wide receivers have been considered open on 42% of targets (14th) this season. Cooper can create that space especially on third down, where Allen has often been forced to scramble and find an open receiver. Allen’s completion percentage is just 52.1 on third down (averaging 62.8 this season).
“[Cooper’s] obviously a big dude, like pretty good with the ball in his hand after the catch, but I would say the main thing is winning at the line of scrimmage and creating separation,” White said. “Which is everything in this day and age, especially on third down, when you know you’re, for the most part you’re going to get man coverage or blitz zero, like, you’re counting on him to win, and I remember in Dallas way more times than not, he won his match.”
Getting Cooper up to speed will be a challenge. But Henry, who is working with him to pick up the offense, said he believes “1,000 percent” that he is someone who can pick up the offense quickly, while he also spends time with Allen learning the “nonverbal and verbal mannerisms.” On the Bills’ side, the quarterbacks have watched cutups from Cleveland to pick up on Cooper’s play.
“It’s been going smoothly,” Cooper told ESPN on Friday. “I’m a quick learner, so hasn’t really been that tough, but obviously I haven’t learned the whole offense yet. Football is not that easy, there’s definitely an array of plays, and I’ll have to stick around to learn the whole thing and to really get it into my memory, but I think for the time being, I’ve picked it up pretty well.”
For the rest of the offense, Cooper’s addition is being viewed as an enhancement to the group.
“I mean, same thing like adding another person with money in your household, help you pay everything, help everything out,” rookie wide receiver Keon Coleman said. “Help everybody else get open and just bring more thrill to the offense.”