Browns Digest

Did Browns Extending Jerry Jeudy Spark Amari Cooper's Holdout?

Cleveland wasted no time offering a three-year, $58 million extension to Jeudy just weeks after trading for him

Spencer German

Jerry Jeudy goes through on-field drills during Browns OTAs
Jerry Jeudy goes through on-field drills during Browns OTAs / Spencer German
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Amari Cooper watch will be in full effect over the next month until the Browns open up training camp in late July.

Cleveland's top pass-catcher sent a message to the team last week by skipping all three days worth of veteran minicamp, accruing over $100,000 in fines in the process. As Cooper enters the final year of his current deal he wants an extension and it's easy to understand why.

Having just turned 30 this week, Cooper likely sees this next deal as his last opportunity of his career to cash in for a near-the-top of the market pay day. In recent weeks, a number of Cooper's wide receiver peers across the league received massive extensions of their own. Now he wants the same.

There's one extension in particularly that could have really left Cooper miffed though, particularly because it came so close to home. Less than two weeks after the Browns traded for Jerry Jeudy back in March, the franchise forked over a three-year $58 million extension to the 25-year-old before he'd even played a single snap for the team.

As Chris Easterling of the Akron Beacon Journal explained on The Dawg Check podcast this week, it's totally reasonable why such a decision could have left Cooper frustrated.

"I think the thing that upset Amari Cooper is Jerry Jeudy getting an extension," Easterling said. "I thought Amari Cooper would show up to minicamp. There's been nothing about Amari Cooper – at least in the time he's been in Cleveland indicating he's anything but a consummate pro. Nothing.

"The fact that he was like, 'nah, I'll take all the fines,' tells me he's legitimately ticked off and I think he has a right to be legitimately ticked off."

To be fair to Cooper, nothing is known of his true feelings about the Jeudy extension coming before his own at this time. Easterling is simply using context clues to make an inference about why one of the ultimate team first players on the Browns roster may have decided to initiate a holdout.

It's not hard to connect the dots on that that theory though. Jeudy just arrived in Cleveland and still has a lot to prove as a former first-round pick. Cooper on the other hand has done nothing but show up and produce for the Browns since his arrival in 2022. In fact, after putting up 1,250 yards this past season he became the first receiver in franchise history to record back-to-back 1,000-yard receiving seasons.

Whatever triggered Cooper's holdout getting it resolved before the start of training camp is a storyline everyone will be following.

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Spencer German

SPENCER GERMAN

Spencer German is a contributor to the Northeast Ohio cluster of sites, including Cavs Insider, Cleveland Baseball Insider and most notably Browns Digest. He also works as a fill-in host on Cleveland Sports Radio, 92.3 The Fan, one of the Browns radio affiliate stations in Cleveland. Despite being a Cleveland transplant, Spencer has enjoyed making Northeast Ohio home ever since he attended college locally at John Carroll University, where he graduated in 2013.

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