Bills GM Brandon Beane breaks down timeline of Amari Cooper trade

Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane weighed in on whether his acquisition of Amari Cooper was done in response to the Davante Adams trade.

Kyle Silagyi | Oct 17, 2024

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An outsider would be forgiven for mistaking the Buffalo Bills’ Tuesday acquisition of wide receiver Amari Cooper as a reactionary maneuver.

News of the trade broke just hours after the division-rival New York Jets acquired a multi-time Pro Bowl wideout of their own in Davante Adams, a move that, to many pundits, signaled that Gang Green was not about to allow Buffalo to leisurely stroll to its fifth-straight AFC East crowd without a fight. From a 30,000-foot view, the timeline suggested that the Bills’ acquisition of Cooper came in direct response to New York’s trade.

This was not the case, however, with Bills general manager Brandon Beane breaking down the trade timeline during a Wednesday appearance on The Pat McAfee Show. The executive told the host that he was looking at several receivers, Adams among them, before circling Cooper as the best fit for a bevy of reasons last week. Thus commenced a string of conversations with Cleveland Browns general manager Andrew Berry, with the agreement to send Cooper across Lake Erie being at the “finish line” by the time news of the Adams trade broke Tuesday morning.

“Definitely had some conversations with Cleveland,” Beane said. “Andrew Berry’s a great dude, we’ve done deals before. We talked last week. With us playing on Monday night and them playing Sunday, we talked again on Sunday night after their game. He was still trying to decide. No team wants to give a player away, but you’re also looking at the now and the future. Talked to him Monday again, Sunday night, again Monday. Ultimately, I told him let’s touch base after our game [on] Tuesday morning. Things got hot and heavy [Tuesday] morning.”

Finances played a significant role in the Cooper trade; the Browns converted the bulk of the wideout’s salary to a signing bonus in the offseason, meaning that the cash-strapped Bills were able to acquire him for just over $800,000, per NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero. Compare this to the $17 million base salary carried by Adams, and Cooper made significantly more sense for a Buffalo team that was operating with just over $3 million in available cap space.

Though two AFC East clubs acquired offense-altering receivers within hours of each other, the moves had very little to do with one another. The Jets got their player of preference, whereas Buffalo received a seven-time 1,000-yard wideout who it zeroed in on last week; Adams and Cooper will both look to aid in their respective club's pursuit of a division title down the stretch.

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