The Buffalo Bills have made a move to help their struggling wide receiver room, acquiring Amari Cooper via trade from the Cleveland Browns. The deal was first reported by Jordan Schultz of Fox Sports.

Ian Rapoport came up with the details say Cleveland will get Buffalo’s third, while the Bills will get the Browns’ sixth round, but Buffalo will have the same number of picks as they did at the start of the day. Buffalo also gets a 2026 seventh-rounder. The value is equivalent to that of a late-round compensatory third-round pick or an early fourth-round pick, depending on where teams end up.

Cooper was on the short list of receivers we speculated the Bills could trade last week. This is what I wrote then:

Why Amari Cooper makes sense for the bills
Cooper has averaged more than 48 yards per game in every season of his 10-year career and has reached 1,000 yards in five of the past six years and eight seasons overall. He is a consistent touchdown scorer. He’s played with some bad QBs and clearly wants out of Cleveland. He’s in the final year of his deal and making the NFL minimum after Cleveland restructured his deal, so any team trading for him won’t cost much cap space.

As writer emeritus Dan Lavoie of Buffalo Rumblings noted to me, “Cooper is as automatic as they come. I know he turned 30 this year, but the guy is as automatic as they come. In nine years he averaged 80 catches, 1,134 yards and 7 touchdowns.”

This move should take Mack Hollins out of the starting lineup once Cooper gets up to speed. Hollins has led the Bills to receiver in a short time, but is the figurehead of a group that really can’t separate itself from defensemen outside of Khalil Shakir.

Cooper seemed like the best financial fit for the salary cap Bills from the start, as we discussed in early October. The Browns paid Cooper’s money up front for the season, so the only remaining money Buffalo has to pay is the league minimum.

Amari Cooper makes a lot more sense
The Cleveland Browns I certainly haven’t given up on the 2024 season, but wide receiver Amari Cooper might. By all accounts, he’s going through the motions in Cleveland and could use a change of scenery.

The Browns have already restructured Cooper’s contract, so he is now making the NFL league minimum after receiving a $19 million bonus earlier this year. Cleveland also has the cap space to absorb Cooper’s huge dead cap hit if they trade him. By all accounts, the Browns have already laid the groundwork for this move.

This is the latest in a series of trades during the season for general manager Brandon Beane, although most of them have come at the deadline. In 2023, Beane traded for Green Bay Packers cornerback Rasul Douglas on Halloween when Tre’Davious White was injured. In 2017, the Bills traded for receiver Kelvin Benjamin, a move that ultimately didn’t work out well for Beane. (He also sent receiver Zay Jones to the Oakland Raiders in 2019.)

This marks the third time in his career that Cooper has been traded. He started his NFL career with the Oakland Raiders before being dealt to the Dallas Cowboys in 2018. After 3.5 seasons with Dallas, he was sent to the Cleveland Browns ahead of the 2022 season.

In case you want to get into the wayback machine, we’ve been following Amari Cooper so long that we even have a 2015 NFL Draft scouting report for you!