BEREA — The contract dispute between wide receiver Amari Cooper and the Cleveland Browns ended before he even reached training camp.
Cooper and the Browns have agreed to a restructured deal that will pay him $5 million in bonuses and guarantee his initial $20 million base salary, a league source confirmed to the Beacon Journal. Bleacher Report’s Jordan Schultz first reported the news.
No additional years were added to the contract and Cooper will receive half of his guaranteed salary as a signing bonus. He remains a potential free agent at the end of the season.
The dispute erupted in June, when Cooper failed to show up for the team’s mandatory minicamp. The Browns’ veterans reported to training camp Tuesday, and Cooper’s revised contract was released this afternoon.
There was no player who was not present on time for the Browns.
Cooper was fined $50,000 for each day of training camp he missed, according to the league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Players Association. He was fined more than $101,000 for the three days of minicamp he missed.
“Amari’s going to be good,” quarterback Deshaun Watson said Wednesday at his foundation’s 7-on-7 football tournament. “As far as the rest, that’s their business. I can’t get into specifics. He knows we love him and we want him back, for sure.”
The only public comment Cooper made this offseason wasn’t even a direct question about his contract dispute. He was interviewed by gaming company Betr in June and was asked to be an interviewer to show off his speed in a foot race.
“I’d hurt my hamstring or something trying to race you,” Cooper replied. “I’m trying to get paid this year.”
Cooper, 30, is in the final season of a five-year contract that was originally signed while he was with the Dallas Cowboys in 2020. The Browns acquired him two years into the contract, in 2022, and immediately restructured the deal to help create cap space that season while creating void years in 2025 and 2026.
Under the original deal, Cooper was set to make $20 million, but it wasn’t guaranteed. His salary cap hit for the Browns this year under the previous contract was $23.776 million — second-highest on the team behind Watson’s nearly $64 million — because of the prorated signing bonus from the 2022 restructuring.
Cooper has been one of the Browns’ most consistent players since arriving in the trade with Dallas, which will face Cleveland in the season opener on Sept. 8. In two seasons, he has appeared in 32 of a possible 34 regular-season games and last season’s playoff loss, with only one of those absences being directly due to injury, that one coming with a heel injury in Week 17 of last season against the New York Jets.
Cooper became the first Browns receiver to have back-to-back seasons of 1,000-plus receiving yards. He had 150 receptions for 2,410 yards (eighth in the league over that span) and 14 touchdowns over the past two seasons.
Last season, Cooper was selected to the Pro Bowl for the fifth time after catching 72 passes for 1,250 yards and five touchdowns. That included a franchise-record 265 yards and two touchdowns on 11 receptions in a Week 16 win over the Houston Texans.
Cooper’s leverage in the contract negotiations hinged on the Browns’ lack of proven players in the receiving corps. Even the “established” players at the position — Jerry Jeudy, acquired in March from the Denver Broncos, and Elijah Moore, drafted from the New York Jets last season — faced plenty of questions about their true potential.
Jeudy, who will play this season in the fourth year of his rookie contract after being a first-round pick of the Broncos in 2021, received a three-year, $52.5 million extension ($41 million guaranteed and $28.01 million newly guaranteed) just days after being acquired by the Browns. Moore, a second-round pick of the Jets in 2021, is entering the final year of his rookie contract.
Part of the negotiations was finding the right balance between paying Cooper for his production while protecting the Browns because of his age. The negotiations were complicated by the number of big contracts handed out to various receivers around the league, including Justin Jefferson of the Minnesota Vikings, A.J. Brown of the Philadelphia Eagles and Amon-Ra St. Brown of the Detroit Lions, which made them the three highest-paid receivers in terms of average annual value.
Jefferson and St. Brown are 25, while Brown is 27. Cooper turned 30 on June 17 and is one of eight 30-somethings among the top 20 receivers in terms of average annual contract value.
According to OvertheCap.com, Cooper’s $20 million base salary for this season is tied with 28-year-old Chris Godwin of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for 20th among all receivers in average annual salary. Of the 19 players ahead of Cooper, seven are 30 or older:
- No. 4 Tyreek Hill, Miami Dolphins, 30 years old, $30 million
- No. 6 Davante Adams, Las Vegas Raiders, 32, $28 million
- No. 7 Cooper Kupp, Los Angeles Rams, 31, $26.7 million
- No. 14 Calvin Ridley, Tennessee Titans, 30, $23 million
- No. 15 Stefon Diggs, Houston Texans, 32, $22.52 million
- No. 18 Mike Evans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 31, $20.5 million
- No. 19 Keenan Allen, Chicago Bears, 32, $20.025 million
The former No. 4 overall pick of the Oakland Raiders in the 2015 draft out of the University of Alabama has played in 140 career regular-season games between the Raiders (2015-18), Cowboys (2018-21) and Browns (2022-present) with 667 receptions for 9,486 yards and 60 touchdowns. He has added 25 receptions for 304 yards and two touchdowns in five career playoff games, including four receptions for 59 yards in the Browns’ AFC Series loss to the Houston Texans in January.
Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. For more on the Browns, visit www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ