HOUSTON — On March 12, 2022, the Browns acquired wide receiver Amari Cooper from Dallas in exchange for what amounted to a fifth-round draft pick. The Cowboys were trying to shed the former Pro Bowler's roughly $20 million salary.
That deal continues to amount to highway robbery in Cleveland's favor.
After announcing his presence along the shores of Lake Erie with an 1,160-yard, nine-touchdown performance in 2022, Cooper had a chance to forever etch his name into Browns lore in 2023 by becoming the first player in franchise history with back-to-back 1,000-yard receiving seasons. The 29-year-old eclipsed the mark on the first play from scrimmage Sunday against the Houston Texans, hauling in a 53-yard pass from Joe Flacco that set up a Jerome Ford touchdown run.
But Cooper wasn't finished. In fact, that throw would turn out to be the start of a record-setting day.
When the dust settled on Cleveland's 36-22 win over the Houston, Cooper's final stat sheet read like this: 11 catches, 265 yards, two TDs, and a 2-point conversion. If you're wondering, the yardage output is a club record for a single game, breaking Josh Gordon's previous tally of 261 set back in 2013.
The Browns needed to have this game in order to keep control of their own playoff destiny, and Cooper provided the bulk of the offense. The big blow came early in the second quarter, when he grabbed another bomb from Flacco that resulted in a 75-yard TD. That play not only put him at 150 yards for the game before halftime, but also made him the only player in Cleveland lore with a pair of 1,100-yard seasons while wearing the uniform.
And the yards only kept coming, including an incredible fourth-down reception in the third that set up a seven-yard score. With the game appearing to be in hand at 36-7 in the final quarter, head coach Kevin Stefanski pulled Cooper and other starters from the field, and it appeared his day would end nine yards short of Gordon's record.
Yet in a strange twist of fate, the Browns' backups and the lack of a kicking game thanks to Dustin Hopkins' injury allowed the Texans to cut the deficit to 14 points with a little over four minutes left. That forced Stefanski to put his first team back out there in an effort to secure the W, and it was during that sequence that Cooper snagged his 11th and final pass to earn a place in the record book.
Safe to say, Cooper has more than lived up to expectations since coming to the Browns, giving the team a bona fide receiving threat that has been rare since the club's glory years of the 1950s and '60s. Entering Week 16, his 16.1 yards per catch were already a career-high over his nine-year NFL tenure that includes time with Dallas as well as the Oakland Raiders.
Since the franchise's founding in 1946, the Browns have had a total of just 17 1,000-yard receiving seasons, with Hall of Famers Mac Speedie and Ozzie Newsome joining Cooper as the only men to do it twice. Additionally, Cooper is now just the fourth to garner at least 1,200 yards, a feat only matched by Webster Slaughter, Braylon Edwards, and Gordon, who still holds the team's single-season record with 1,646 in 2013.
One more note: In the annals of NFL history, Coopers 265 yards are the 17th-most by any player in any game, regular season or postseason.