BEREA — Browns No. 1 receiver Amari Cooper, heading into the final year of his contract, was absent Tuesday on the first day of mandatory minicamp. It’s a finable offense for the five-time Pro Bowler, whose cap number for this season is $23.77 million.
Cooper, who’s believed to be in Cleveland, played in David Njoku’s celebrity softball game on Saturday but wasn’t made available to the media.
Cooper led the Browns with 72 receptions for 1,250 yards last season and had 5 TDs. He likely wants an extension in the wake of the receiver market exploding.
The Vikings’ Justin Jefferson just signed to a four-year deal worth $140 million, for an average of $35 million a year, making him the highest-paid receiver in the NFL — and the highest-paid non-QB in the league.
The Browns gave new receiver Jerry Jeudy $17.5 million a year after acquiring him in an offseason trade with the Broncos. The three-year contract extension through 2027 is worth up to $58 million, including $41 million fully guaranteed.
The Browns foresaw the receiver explosion at the start of the offseason and acted quickly when it came to securing Jeudy.
“One of the things that we feel like is a competitive advantage for us has been our contract management philosophy,” Browns GM Andrew Berry said at the NFL annual meetings in March.
“And we’re firm believers that in that space the best front offices or the best teams are proactive as opposed to reactionary and market dynamics. … In Jerry’s case, you already saw two new receiver contracts enter the market that really are [a] harbinger of things to come in that market. I mean, probably by Week 1 of the NFL season, the top of that market’s going to be north of $30 million.
“So as we think of the contract management space, rather than be reactive to the new market, we try and be proactive. And probably more importantly when we think about an extension or a signing, we think about, ‘OK, well where is the market actually going to be on September 1 as opposed to maybe an irrelevant market on March 1,’ so to speak.”
