Dallas Cowboys trade Amari Cooper to Cleveland Browns for draft picks
The great Amari Cooper experiment is over.
The Dallas Cowboys have agreed to trade Cooper to the Cleveland Browns for a swap of draft picks.
Cooper and a 2022 sixth-round draft pick will go to Cleveland, and a fifth-round pick and sixth-round pick will come back to Dallas.
The deal will not be official until the official start of the new league year on March 16, but this trade was about money, not picks.
The move saves $20 million in cash in terms of Cooper’s base salary for 2022 and it clears $16 million in 2022 cap space.
The Cowboys were going to cut Cooper before March 20 when his base salary for 2022 would have been guaranteed.
The deal means that at least the Cowboys got something for Cooper and they didn’t let him go for free.
But it’s not an equal swap when considering the Cowboys surrendered their first-round draft pick in 2019 to the Las Vegas Raiders when they traded for Cooper midway through the 2018 season. The Raiders used the 27th pick in the 2019 NFL Draft to select safety Jonathan Abram.
The Cowboys later signed Cooper to a five-year, $100 million contract before the 2020 season only to determine that the team’s offensive system didn’t value him as No. 1 receiver, nor did his play and production justify his $20 million salary.
Cooper made two Pro Bowls in his time in Dallas and ranked eighth in the league in targets (428) among receivers, seventh in receptions (292), ninth in receiving yards (3,893) and ninth in receiving touchdowns (27) during that span, according to ESPN.
But he finished 2021 with just 68 catches for 865 yards and eight touchdowns. He was third on the team in catches and tied for second in targets.
He also missed two games with COVID-19 — both losses within a span of five days — and was one of two players on the roster who refused to get vaccinated.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and vice president Stephen Jones alluded to Cooper’s pending departure since the end of the 2021, pointing out how his production and usage in the offense didn’t match the investment the team made in him with a $20 million annual salary.
With Cooper gone, CeeDee Lamb will become the team’s No. 1 receiver and the Cowboys will use some of the savings to re-sign receiver Michael Gallup. Lamb led the Cowboys with 79 catches for 1,102 yards on 120 targets in 2021.
The team will also likely target a receiver in the 2022 NFL Draft.
This story was originally published March 12, 2022 at 1:47 PM.
