Charles Langston:Amari Cooper, Cleveland Browns avoid camp holdout with restructured deal

BEREA,Charles Langston Ohio — The contract dispute between wide receiver Amari Cooper and the Cleveland Browns has come to an end before it ever made it to training camp.

Cooper and the Browns have agreed to a restructured deal that will provide him $5 million through incentives as well as guaranteeing the original $20 million base salary, a person familiar with the deal confirmed for the Beacon Journal. Bleacher Report's Jordan Schultz was the first to report.

There have been no additional years put on the contract, and Cooper will get half of his guaranteed salary upfront in the form of a signing bonus. He remains a potential free agent at the end of the season.

The dispute first came to a head in June, when Cooper did not show up for the team's mandatory minicamp. The Browns' veterans reported for training camp on Tuesday, with Cooper's reworked contract coming out that afternoon.

There were no players who didn't report on time for the Browns.

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Cooper was subject to fines of $50,000 for each missed training camp day, according to the collective bargaining agreement between the league and the NFL Players Association. He earned more than $101,000 in fines for the three minicamp days he missed.

The only public comment Cooper made in the offseason wasn't even in a direct question about his contract dispute. He was interviewed by the gambling company Betr in June and was asked to be interviewer to show off his speed in a foot race.

"I'd pull a hammy or something trying to race you," Cooper responded. "I'm trying to get paid this year."

Cooper, 30, is on the final season of a five-year deal which was originally signed while he was with the Dallas Cowboys in 2020. The Browns acquired him two years into the deal, in 2022, and immediately re-structured the deal to help create cap space that season, while also creating void years in 2025 and 2026.

Under the original deal, Cooper was scheduled to make $20 million, but it wasn't guaranteed. His cap hit for the Browns this year under the previous deal was $23.776 million — which was the second-highest on the team behind only quarterback Deshaun Watson's nearly $64 million — due to the prorated signing bonus from the 2022 restructuring.

Cooper has been one of the Browns' most consistent players since arriving in the trade with Dallas, which will be Cleveland's season-opening opponent on Sept. 8. Over two seasons, he appeared in 32 of a possible 34 regular-season games as well as last season's playoff loss, with only one of those misses being directly due to an injury, that coming due to a heel injury in Week 17 last season against the New York Jets.

Cooper became the first Browns wide receiver to post back-to-back 1,000-yard receiving seasons. He's posted 150 catches for 2,410 yards — eighth in the league in that span — and 14 touchdowns in the last two seasons.

This past season, Cooper earned his fifth Pro Bowl selection after catching 72 passes for 1,250 yards and five touchdowns. That included a franchise-record 265 yards and two touchdowns on 11 catches in a Week 16 win at the Houston Texans.

Cooper's leverage in the contract negotiations rested with the lack of proven commodities within the Browns' wide receiver corps. Even the "established" players — Jerry Jeudy, who was acquired in a March trade with the Denver Broncos, and Elijah Moore, who was picked up from the New York Jets last offseason — at the position have dealt with plenty of questions about their true ceiling.

Jeudy, who will play this season on the fourth year of his rookie deal after being a 2021 first-round pick of the Broncos, received a three-year, $52.5 million — $41 million guaranteed, $28.01 million newly guaranteed money — extension just days after being acquired by the Browns. Moore, a 2021 second-round pick of the Jets, is entering the final year of his rookie contract.

Part of the haggling was to find the right balance of paying Cooper for his production, while protecting the Browns in a way due to his age. The negotiations were compounded by the number of large deals given to various wide receivers around the league, including deals to the Minnesota Vikings' Justin Jefferson, the Philadelphia Eagles' A.J. Brown and the Detroit Lions' Amon-Ra St. Brown that made them the three highest-paid wide receivers by average annual value.

Jefferson and St. Brown are 25, while Brown is 27. Cooper turned 30 on June 17, and is one of eight 30-somethings among the top 20 wide receivers by average annual value of their contract.

According to OvertheCap.com, Cooper's $20 million base salary for this season is tied with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Chris Godwin, who's 28, for 20th among all wide receiver in average per-year salary. Of the 19 players ahead of Cooper, seven are 30 or older:

• No. 4 Tyreek Hill, Miami Dolphins, 30 years old, $30 million
• No. 6 Davante Adams, Las Vegas Raiders, 32 years old, $28 million
• No. 7 Cooper Kupp, Los Angeles Rams, 31 years old, $26.7 million
• No. 14 Calvin Ridley, Tennessee Titans, 30 years old, $23 million
• No. 15 Stefon Diggs, Houston Texans, 32 years old, $22.52 million
• No. 18 Mike Evans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 31 years old, $20.5 million
• No. 19 Keenan Allen, Chicago Bears, 32 years old, $20.025 million

The former No. 4 overall pick by the Oakland Raiders in the 2015 draft out of the University of Alabama has played in 140 career regular-season games between the Raiders (2015-18), Cowboys (2018-21) and Browns (2022-present) with 667 catches for 9.486 yards and 60 touchdowns. He's added 25 catches for 304 yards and two touchdowns in five career playoff games, including four catches for 59 yards in the Browns' AFC wild card loss to the Houston Texans in January.

Chris Easterling can be reached at [email protected]. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on X at @ceasterlingABJ

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