Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen glowed about recently acquired wide receiver Amari Cooper during his Wednesday press conference.
The season of giving is not yet upon us, but Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane was feeling a bit generous earlier this week when he acquired a dynamic new target for quarterback Josh Allen in the form of seven-time 1,000-yard wide receiver Amari Cooper. The move gives the signal-caller a proven target eater and separator, attributes he’s lacked from his receiving corps through the first six weeks of the 2024 campaign.
As one could imagine, Allen is over the moon about the acquisition.
“Very excited about him,” Allen told reporters during a Wednesday press conference. “I’ve been a big fan of his for a very long time. Very smart, very detailed in the way that he runs his routes. I think that he can help us a lot.
The passer mentions that he’s long been a fan of Cooper’s game, and frankly, it’s difficult not to be; he’s been one of the league’s most productive wide receivers since being selected by the then-Oakland Raiders with the fourth overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft, the only reason he’s not mentioned alongside the NFL’s elite pass-catchers more often being the fact that he’s been producing at an immensely productive rate for nearly a decade. He’s topped 1,000 receiving yards in all but two of his nine previous seasons, besting 1,100 yards in four of the last five campaigns; he’s played for three previous teams and has produced for all of them, a résumé that has Allen fired up.
“He’s [a] multiple thousand-yard receiver,” Allen said. “He’s [a] multiple Pro Bowl guy. We’ve got a few teammates that have been teammates with him before and just raved about him as a guy, as a character. Excited to have him in our locker room, and he’ll fit in quite nicely here.”
Adjusting to a brand-new organization, offensive scheme, and quarterback on the fly is not an easy task, but it’s, again, something that Cooper has done before; he was traded from the Raiders to the Dallas Cowboys midway through the 2018 season, catching 53 passes for 725 yards and six scores to close out that year with America’s Team. He’s demonstrably capable of a mid-season pivot, and Allen is eager to help him out along the way.
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“It’s not the easiest thing just based on verbiage and terminology and what system he was in before this,” Allen said. “Our system is not the easiest to learn, but again, the things that I’ve heard about him and know about him, he’s a very smart guy. He’s going to work extremely hard and he’s going to figure this out. I’m going to help him as much as I can, but we’ve got a lot of guys in this building that are at his aid and willing to help at any point that he asks for it. No doubt he’ll get in tune real quick.”
A five-time Pro Bowler who is no stranger to logging over 100 targets per season, Cooper immediately projects as the top option in Buffalo’s talented, but young and generally unproven receiving corps. He’ll demand a heavy plate in the team’s self-professed ‘everyone eats’ offense; that said, Allen still plans to feed his other targets, feeling as though Cooper will effectively complement and add to the team’s philosophy.
“I think it’s going to help us regardless because defenses obviously know who he is,” Allen said. “We’re going try to get him his, but everybody else is still going to get theirs. I think that’s the most important thing. I’m still just trying to throw it to the open guy, but I think having a type of guy like him who has done it consistently over the course of his career and has done it at a high level is going to help everybody in this building on the offensive side of the ball.”