Amari Cooper, seeking new contract, absent from Browns' mandatory minicamp

Add Amari Cooper to the list of contract-year players absent from mandatory minicamp.

The Browns receiver was not in attendance for Cleveland’s Tuesday session and is subject to fines.

Head coach Kevin Stefanski said Cooper’s absence was not excused.

“These situations, I understand that they do come up,” Stefanski said. “I’ll really leave all of that between Amari, Amari’s agent and AB (general manager Andrew Berry) and those type of conversations. Again, as you guys know, we focus on guys that are here. We’ll get some good work in and really keep it at that.”

When asked if Cooper or his agent informed the team that he would miss Tuesday’s minicamp, Stefanski said “there’s been a dialogue” between the organization and Cooper.

Cooper is entering the final year of the contract he signed with the Dallas Cowboys in 2020, a five-year, $100 million deal that ended up prompting the Cowboys to move him to Cleveland in exchange for pennies on the dollar (a fifth-round pick and sixth-round pick swap) and cap relief in 2022.

It didn’t take long for that contract to look rather attractive for those balancing cap sheets. Cooper’s deal currently pays him an average of $20 million per year, which is tied for the 20th-highest average annual salary at the position in the NFL.

Cooper finished fifth in receiving yards (1,250) in the league last season, a total he posted while playing with five different starting quarterbacks. He turns 30 in six days, and he’ll never be positioned better to cash in on his remaining earning power than right now.

With this in mind, a few days of fines are worth the temporary loss.

It is worth noting Cooper was in attendance for Cleveland’s OTAs prior to starting his mandatory minicamp holdout. He’s clearly digging into a negotiating position in order to capitalize financially while the iron is still hot.

The Browns currently have $13.7 million in available cap space, according to Over The Cap, and could use that to their advantage with an adjusted deal, or push out additional expenses into future years via an extension. We’ll see if they can arrive at a compromise before training camp.