At 1-4 and with an offense that’s yet to reach 20 points or 300 yards in a game, the Cleveland Browns are searching for answers and rapidly being confronted with difficult questions about their future. This was supposed to be an all-in season, not an all-out disaster.
An offense that’s lacked rhythm or consistency certainly would not get better by trading wide receiver Amari Cooper. But is it time for the Browns to look to the future and start making long-term decisions? After the offense failed to convert a single third down with quarterback Deshaun Watson in the game on Sunday and again struggled with alignment and substitution issues, might it be best to call this latest offensive remake a wreck and begin to move on?
A week ago, that thought would have been hard for the team’s decision-makers to swallow. However, after the most embarrassing offensive performance yet versus Washington, Cleveland has to at least discuss trading Cooper as part of embracing the reality of the situation.
For 2 1/2 years, the folks running the team have had to operate under the assumption that the Watson experiment would work and that big spending on older players and pushing salary-cap money to future years would help the Browns maximize their potential. Now that they’ve seen — again — that it isn’t working with Watson, it’s time to at least start with the awkward conversations about the future.
Cooper is 30 and only under contract for the rest of this season, though the Browns added void years to his deal in July when they guaranteed Cooper’s 2024 salary and added incentives to the deal. If Cooper finishes the year in Cleveland, the Browns could potentially spread his remaining cap hit over multiple seasons. If he’s traded, the Browns will take on $22 million in dead money on their 2025 cap.
The guarantees being paid ahead of this season make Cooper an attractive trade target for teams with legitimate Super Bowl aspirations. An acquiring team would only take on his remaining base salary for 2024, which is less than $1 million. Per the NFL’s Public Salary Cap Report, the Buffalo Bills started the week with under $2 million in available cap space and the Kansas City Chiefs started with under $5 million, so Cooper’s affordability could end up helping his trade market.
For the Browns, though, the complications here don’t just involve potentially trading their No. 1 receiver with few proven options behind him. Knowing that $22 million in dead money would be on next year’s cap would be a step toward planning what’s increasingly becoming an uncomfortable and uncertain future.
Considering the acquisition of Cooper in March 2022 for a late-round pick swap is the best trade general manager Andrew Berry has made and that Cooper is going to count on the cap for the foreseeable future, no one involved closed the door on him remaining a Brown — even as the reworked contract didn’t add any years to the deal.
So now — right now, and in the next four weeks — the Browns have to begin evaluating what they think their present and future might hold. Is there an internal delusion that this season can be saved? Do they want Cooper beyond this year? If so, can they possibly believe Cooper wants them?
There’s also the complication that Cooper is not having his best season. No one in the passing game is, but he’s never seemed comfortable in this offense. Cooper was linked to trade rumors involving the San Francisco 49ers amid the Browns’ reported pursuit of wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk in August. Though he never addressed it directly, Cooper posted an Instagram story shortly after the Browns were publicly linked to Aiyuk that said, “I wouldn’t mind at all.”
An absurd 45% of passes directed at Amari Cooper have qualified as “off target” this season.
We haven’t seen an off-target rate that high for a player with 40+ targets since at least prior to 2011.
— Mike Clay (@MikeClayNFL) October 8, 2024
Cooper had big drops — the most crucial one of the season in Las Vegas led to an interception — in three of the season’s first four weeks. He scored both of the Browns’ touchdowns in Week 3 and looked like the clear-cut No. 1 receiver he’s been since arriving in Cleveland, and for most of his 10-year career.
Per Pro Football Focus (PFF), Cooper had 18 drops as a rookie with the Raiders. Since then, he’s averaged around five per season but already has five in 2024. His most with the Browns was six in 2022, but his drop rate has been under 8 percent in five of the last six years.
Generally, Cooper has been dependable. Where he’s been special is with his strength and balance during and after the process of making the catch. He’s an outstanding route runner, too, and he can still make plays in the vertical passing game. His average depth of target over three seasons with the Browns is about 13.5 yards, per PFF, and last December he set a franchise record with a 265-yard receiving day in a win at Houston.
Cooper was at his best last December with Joe Flacco at quarterback. This current version with Watson under center has been like Watson’s passes: all over the place. And though the vibe and outlook might have been different had Cooper caught a perfectly placed pass for about 30 yards in Las Vegas instead of turning it into a drop and interception, it didn’t happen. The Browns seem much closer to being sunk than on the verge of a turnaround.
Cooper still has been busy. He commanded a 65.3 percent share of the Browns’ air yards in the messy loss at Washington, the second highest of any receiver in Week 5, per the NFL’s Next Gen Stats. Plays are still scripted for him, and Watson is still looking for him. Cooper’s two big plays versus the New York Giants came on a day in which he got 12 targets.
Like trying to pick out the most fixable flaws with the current offense, gauging where it might be in a month — or year — is also difficult. The Browns don’t have a starting running back, No. 1 wide receiver or starting left tackle under contract for next year. Frankly, they have a disaster on their hands with more than $170 million in fully guaranteed cap dollars still committed to Watson.
Though the team’s most important and expensive calls regarding the future won’t be made for months, the Browns have been so bad that it’s time to at least discuss them. Checking around to see if any team might offer a third-round pick for Cooper has to be a part of furthering those discussions.
Even if the Browns believe trading Cooper is their best move, they could still wait until closer to the Nov. 5 trade deadline in the hopes that the number of receiver-needy teams will grow and drive up the price. The fair assumption would be that any team trading for Cooper would be a Super Bowl contender, so Cleveland would be acquiring a late third-round pick in the 85-90 range — or maybe something similar in a package involving multiple picks or even another player.
The Chiefs have two third-round picks in 2025, the second from their trade of cornerback L’Jarius Sneed to Tennessee in March. The Bills have an extra fourth-round pick in 2025 from a trade they made with the Chicago Bears during April’s draft. If the Browns potentially wanted a young receiver back in any Cooper trade, they could reach out to the Green Bay Packers, who currently carry six wideouts — all of whom are on rookie deals.
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There’s likely no rush, and there’s also probably an internal sentiment that the Browns still have to try to let Watson and all involved turn things around. Nothing has been fun for the 2024 Browns, and almost nothing has worked.
So whether or not potentially trading Cooper was a large part of the team restructuring his contract in July or just part of the overall business of pushing money forward with the ever-growing salary cap, the long-term view of things can’t be what it was just a few months ago. It has to be time for the Browns to start planning for the future.
(Photo: Sue Ogrocki / Associated Press)
