Bills Amari Cooper throws shade at Browns after big win vs Chiefs

The Browns traded Cooper to the Bills for a 3rd round pick

While the two-win Cleveland Browns were losing badly to the three-win New Orleans Saints, a former employee was helping his new club take down the best team in the AFC.

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Before this weekend’s slate of games, only the Kansas City Chiefs were unbeaten and untied in the NFL. That changed when the Buffalo Bills defeated the Chiefs 30-21 in front of a capacity Highmark Stadium crowd of 71,112 in Western New York. The game was the most important contest for the weekend and was highly anticipated between two of the AFC’s best teams.

On the Bills roster is former Browns wide receiver Amari Cooper. He was traded on October 15, 2024, plus a sixth-round draft pick in exchange for a 2025 third-round selection and a 2026 seventh-round pick.

The game between the Bills and Chiefs was two AFC titans squaring off with a rowdy, electric crowd behind the home squad on every possession. The contest had a playoff vibe to it especially when the Chiefs were handed their first loss of the season.

Cooper contributed with three targets and two receptions for 55 yards. Early in the first quarter facing a third-and-six, Bills QB Josh Allen found Cooper who then dashed 30-yards to the Chiefs’ 31-yard line. Four plays later, Buffalo cashed in with a three-yard touchdown pass to go up 6-0 after a missed PAT.

After the game amidst the celebration, Cooper was interviewed in the locker room by local CBS affiliate Channel 8. Since he was new to the Bills, he did not have the sense of what Buffalo’s AFC East opponents were like or what a game like this against the league’s best might be after a stressful win.

Or what the implications going forward are. Buffalo is now a certainty to gain a post-season bid and also on track to claim the Number 1 seed in the AFC once the playoffs begin.

A reporter asked Coop how much this win meant to him. He responded with:

“First time in a long time I’ve actually felt joy from winning this game. From just the way we played, from having so many guys on the team who are playmakers and they come up and show up whenever their number is called.”

While playing for the Browns, there were numerous wins that could have been deemed special on a list. Last year’s comeback victory over division foe Baltimore Ravens comes to mind or being in the playoffs last year.

And how does Cooper not agree that Cleveland had playmakers around him? TE David Njoku made his first Pro Bowl last year. Nick Chubb is one of the league’s best running backs. Two seasons ago the Browns offensive line was ranked #3 in the league led by OG Joel Bitonio and his six Pro Bowls.

Cooper continued:

“Collectively as a group (Buffalo) is amazing. It’s kind of different place, too, from a lot of different places I have been to. It’s a tight knit group. A lot of the guys go out together, they hang around each other 24/7, and it truly shows up on the field. It truly does.”

Cooper is in a great place since the trade. The weather might be problematic, especially going into December and January, but Buffalo, Kansas City, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh are the AFC’s most legitimate contenders to play in the AFC Championship Game.

And of course, that means the Bills would be one game away from another Super Bowl appearance.

On social media after the game, the reaction on Twitter was all blown up. It appears after this one win that Bills fans are ready to hang a championship banner after a marvelous performance collectively by the entire roster. Buffalo is 4-1 against the Chiefs in recent years in the regular season but cannot break through with a meaningful win during the post-season.

The Bills have gone to four Super Bowls and lost each game. They won two American Football League titles in 1964 and 1965.

Buffalo earned their Week 11 win, and Cooper will become a large portion of their offensive success going forward. In three games since joining Buffalo, Cooper has 10 targets with seven catches for 124 yards, a 17.7 yards per reception average, and one touchdown. In six games with the Browns prior to the trade, he had 53 targets and 24 receptions for 250 yards, a 10.4 yards per reception average with two touchdowns.

Of course, Coop dropping some shade on the Browns might not be quite what it seemed. How many passes did he drop this year alone? How many of those dropped balls could have been a game changer?

During his tenure with Cleveland, Cooper leads the NFL in dropped passes with 11.

And with the Browns sending him to Buffalo, Cooper has been traded three times since entering the NFL in 2015. That is three employers who were willing to ship him off to somewhere else.

Cooper explained:

“This is the stage you dream about. You don’t really dream about the games that aren’t meaningful. You’re dreaming about the meaningful games against the best teams.”

Since coming to Cleveland, the Browns only played in one playoff game, and lost convincingly 45-14 to a Houston Texans team that the franchise had beaten 36-22 just weeks earlier.

Cooper said:

“It doesn’t come around that often, especially if you aren’t on a very good team.”

The only thing Cooper omitted from this statement was the words “Cleveland Browns.” A wrist injury had sidelined Cooper for two games before he returned on Sunday, playing 37 of Buffalo’s 73 offensive snaps.

Coop made a sensational 25-yard toe-tapping catch in the second quarter that the Chiefs wanted to review but lost the challenge. The end result of the reception placed Buffalo on Kansas City’s six-yard line. The Bills scored on the following play and went up 13-7.

Being on a good team, Cooper made this assertion:

“Any player who’s been in this league a long time, most of the guys haven’t always been on good teams. It’s just how it swings in this league.”

The fanbase of the Browns fans might side with Coop and his new-found success. But they also remember the drops from a guy who was vocally unhappy about only making $25 million this season.