What does the addition of Amari Cooper mean for Bills Josh Allen?

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane was sold on wide receiver Amari Cooper nearly 10 years ago.

In 2015, when Beane was an assistant general manager at Carolina, he and then-Panthers receiving coach Ricky Proehl took a pre-draft visit to see Cooper at Alabama. The two took him out to dinner and trained him the next day.

Cooper's reserved personality led to Beane and Proehl leaving dinner thinking, “Man, he didn't like us” – but that wasn't the case. The next day, Cooper met them bright and early, directed them where to park and greeted them with duct tape.

“He beat us there and uploaded the film,” Beane recalled this week. “We go into one of their meeting rooms and you give this guy the clicker and he was like at peace. He just talked to us like a coach: 'This is what I did here. That's what he has. The.' is what he has. That's why I did this.' And we sat in there for over an hour, maybe 1:15…just watching him talk ball.

The Panthers had the 25th overall selection in that year's draft, so selecting Cooper – who was selected fourth overall by the then-Oakland Raiders – was not possible. 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 pick.

Signing the five-time Pro Bowl receiver was “really just an opportunity to add a guy who would add experienced, proven skill to the group,” as Beane described it – at a cost of about $806,667 after the Browns were anything but had implemented 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 before the trade, according to the NFLPA report.

The Bills face the Tennessee Titans on Sunday (1 p.m. ET, CBS) and Cooper is expected to be in the mix right away.

“We'll see, I mean, I think so, but I want to see and I want to revisit the coaches,” Bills coach Sean McDermott said of the prospect. While there will be some hurdles to bringing the 10-year veteran into the offense six games into the season, Cooper will add an option to quarterback Josh Allen downfield and a new veteran in a receiver room that's looking light this season had success.

“Knowing what type of player he is excites me,” Allen said. “Another guy in this locker room who, from what I know and what I've been told about him, is just out to win and will do whatever he can to help this team win football games.” And in this one locker room there is a group of men who all want the same thing and are working towards the same goal. This is a pretty strong team.

Practice squad quarterback Mike White was with the Dallas Cowboys when Cooper was traded from the Raiders to the Cowboys in October 2018. White recalled how “great” a teammate Cooper was and that he was the “prototypical pro.”

But what does he remember most? “How much our season changed in Dallas when we got him,” White said.

When the Cowboys traded for Cooper, the team was 3-4. While they lost Cooper's first game as a team, Dallas won the next five and seven of the next eight, ending the season.

“Well, I'm not trying to predict that for us,” White said, “but that kind of shows what he can bring to the table, so I mean, he's obvious, we all know what he's capable of, but it is like that. “I just think it’s the locker room stuff and the stability that he can bring that I think can help a lot of guys.”

On the court, Cooper, 30, will bolster the Bills' offense, which has scored over 30 points in each of the first three games of the season but has scored just 23 or fewer in the last three games. A weak point for Allen and the receiving game is passes downfield.

Allen is completing 29% of his passes over 20 yards downfield, ranking 23rd in the NFL entering Week 7 – his worst completion rate on such throws in six games since 2019.

Cooper should help with this problem directly.

“Just his approach to the game. How he runs 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 secondly, just his change of direction, just to be able to change direction and get into gear. … Once he gets into a zone … he lets the game come to him, so he has a system. “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 in receivers.”

Cooper has scored 15 touchdowns on go routes or deep fades since the start of 2017 – when route classification tracking began, according to ESPN Analytics/NFL Next Gen Stats – the third-most in the NFL during that time frame behind Tyreek Hill and Mike Evans. Over the past five seasons, Cooper has 78 receptions (fourth), 2,005 yards (sixth) and 20 receiving touchdowns (sixth) on vertical routes.

Even though Cooper had a down year in Cleveland due to the Browns' struggling offense, his ability to create separation is one of his strengths. According to NGS, Bills wide receivers were considered open on 42% of targets (14th) this season. Cooper can create that space, especially on third down, where Allen was often forced to find an open receiver. Allen's completion percentage on third down is just 52.1 (average 62.8 this season).

“(Cooper) is obviously a big guy who has the ball in his hands pretty well after the catch, but I would say the main thing is winning at the line of scrimmage and creating separation,” White said. “That's everything in this day and age, especially on third down when you know you're going to get man coverage or blitz zero for the most part, so you're relying on him to win and.” I still remember that how many times he won his match in Dallas.

Getting Cooper up to speed will be a challenge. But Henry, who is working with him to solve the offense, said he is “1,000 percent” confident that he is someone who can quickly contain the offense while also spending time with Allen on the “non-verbal and to learn “verbal mannerisms”. On the Bills' side, the quarterbacks looked at cutups from Cleveland to emulate Cooper's game.

“It went smoothly,” Cooper told ESPN on Friday. “I'm a quick learner, so it wasn't really hard, but obviously I haven't learned the whole offense yet. Football isn't that easy, there's definitely a series of plays and I have to stick with it. “I want to learn the whole thing and really commit it to memory, but I think I've learned it pretty well at the moment.”

For the rest of the offense, Cooper's addition is viewed as an asset to the group.

“I mean, it's the same as adding another person with money into your household to help you pay for everything, help out for everything,” rookie wide receiver Keon Coleman said. “Help everyone else become more open and bring more excitement to the offense.”