After ten years in the NFL, Amari Cooper announced his retirement this week.
The wide receiver spent the second half of the 2024 season with the Buffalo Bills after being traded from the Cleveland Browns. After arriving in Buffalo, Cooper injured his wrist, limiting his availability to the Josh Allen-led offense. While he had just 20 catches for 297 yards and two touchdowns over eight games, Bills fans will forever remember him as the guy who tossed the touchdown pass to Allen on a broken play. The result
was Josh Allen becoming the first player in NFL history to have a passing touchdown, receiving touchdown, and rushing touchdown in a single game.
At the end of the season, Cooper became a free agent and there was a lot of chatter among Bills’ fans about why the trade if general manager Brandon Beane had no intentions of keeping the 31-year-old, five-time Pro Bowler on the roster.
On August 26, Cooper signed a one-year deal with the Las Vegas Raiders, the team that had drafted him as the fourth overall pick in the 2015 NFL draft. At the time, Cooper said that returning to the Raiders brought his career full circle and that he felt like he still had “some juice left” in his legs.
However, just eight days later, head coach Pete Carroll and told the Raiders head coach that he was hanging up his cleats. Las Vegas offensive coordinator Chip Kelly called the move “unfortunate” saying that he felt Cooper is a “heck of a football player” but also said that only Cooper knows where his heart is.
In his 10 NFL seasons, Cooper was traded three times, twice mid-season. The Raiders sent the wide receivers to the Dallas Cowboys in the middle of the 2018 season where he stayed for three and a half years. At the end of the 2021 season, the Cowboys sent Cooper to Cleveland where he played until he was sent, mid season again, to Buffalo last year.
Cooper had at least one Pro Bowl appearance with each of his teams, excluding the Bills, indicating that his skills as a receiver transcended scheme and playbooks. The former University of Alabama receiver amassed 711 receptions for 10,033 yards (including six 1000 yard seasons – two each with the Raiders, Cowboys, and Browns), and 64 touchdowns over his NFL career.
