Bills general manager Brandon Beane was busy on Tuesday as he orchestrated a trade with Cleveland that sent Pro Bowl wide receiver Amari Cooper and a 2025 sixth-round pick to Buffalo in exchange for a 2025 third-round pick and a 2026 seventh-round pick.

Beane met with the media on Wednesday to discuss why the trade happened and how Cooper will fit in Buffalo's offense.

The GM also gave an update on kicker Tyler Bass.

Here's what we learned.

How the trade went down

According to Beane, Buffalo and Cleveland had started to work on the framework of a deal for Cooper even before the Bills kicked off their Monday night game against the Jets. The Bills GM was in contact with Browns GM Andrew Berry starting Sunday night.

"They had played their game Sunday. I had a conversation with them Sunday evening and a couple more on Monday," Beane said.

Beane added that the Bills were also in the mix for WR Davante Adams as well, but that the favorable contract situation for Cooper made "so much sense" for Buffalo to make him their primary trade target.

"My last conversation was Monday morning, kind of monitoring the Davante situation, and at that point kind of moved our chips into trying to acquire Amari," Beane said.

The Jets' acquisition of Adams didn't speed up or change Buffalo's process. Cooper was the player Beane wanted.

"By the time their move was announced we had honed in on Amari," Beane said.

Cooper, 30, is a free agent after the 2024 season. If the fit works for both sides over the course of the rest of the season, the Bills could re-sign their newly acquired WR in the offseason.

"There's no rule that we can't sign him back as well. So we'll just play it out this year, see how it fits on both sides," he said.

The Bills now have a staple of weapons to support Josh Allen, who ranks 2nd in the NFL among QBs with 13 total touchdowns. Even if Cooper didn't become available via a trade, Beane still had confidence in the current receiving room.

Getting a Pro Bowl caliber such as Cooper was a move made to improve the team as a whole, and Beane has proven to be a GM who will be aggressive adding pieces to compete.

"I'm always looking. It doesn't mean I didn't like the group. I can't make a team like Cleveland do the deal. If we didn't do this deal for him I still like our group. It's not anything there. Any time you can add a player, just like we added Rasul last year, I'm always going to monitor that," he said.

Why Amari Cooper fits in Buffalo's offense

Cooper joins the Bills as a very productive wide receiver. Over his 10-year career, the WR has seven seasons with at least 1,000 yards. Beane said he's appreciated Cooper's game since he was drafted in 2015. The GM loves the passion that the five-time Pro Bowler has for the game.

"He loves ball, and he's very, very smart," Beane said of his newest receiver. "(He's) an outside perimeter receiver, not that he can't play inside. But very good route runner and smooth. He can stretch the field vertically. I think he was high 4.3s when he came out. You still see that."

Beane thinks Cooper's skillset allows him to be a receiver who can line up on the outside or the inside.

"We move our guys around," Beane said of Buffalo's offense. "I know (Khalil) Shakir plays mostly inside, but he's smart and can play outside. Curtis Samuel too, all those guys. So, it's really just add this to Joe's (Brady) pieces and let him, Josh (Allen) and the coaches figure that out."

Cooper had one of his best seasons as a pro in 2023. The WR had a career-high 1,250 receiving yards and averaged a career-high 17.4 yards per catch in his ninth NFL season. When it comes to learning Buffalo's system, Beane said it will take some time.

"You don't just walk in and just plop him in and say go," Beane said. "He's got to get up to speed with our calls, our checks, alignments for each play. So, it'll take a little time. I think we need to be fair to him from that standpoint."

Cooper does have some familiarity in the wide receiver room. Wide receiver coach Adam Henry and Cooper overlapped in Dallas from 2020-2021 when Henry was the Cowboys WR coach. Beane said this will be helpful because of the challenges the wide receiver position presents when onboarding.

"(It's) probably one of the harder ones (position groups)," Beane said of the difficulty level of getting a new wide receiver comfortable. "Unless they've played in that exact system before…I do think Adam Henry, having coached him, knowing maybe he can say this is what we called it in Dallas, or things like that, just to kind of help speed that up."

A fan of Amari Cooper since his Alabama days

Cooper was the fourth overall pick in the 2015 NFL Draft. He played for the University of Alabama from 2012-2014 where he had close to 3,500 receiving yards and 31 touchdowns in just three seasons. Beane was aware of Cooper's successful collegiate career because he was the Panthers' assistant general manager the year that Cooper was drafted.

The then assistant GM had a meeting with Cooper during the pre-draft process that he still remembers today. Beane and the Panthers wide receivers coach at the time, Ricky Proehl, met Cooper in Tuscaloosa, AL for dinner and a workout.

"We pulled into Alabama's football offices, and there was a little gate," Beane recalled. "Sometimes you get here and you show up to work them out, and the kids aren't there yet…we pull right where he told us. He waited right over there. He had something to open the gate for us. Told us right where to park. I was like, this guy's a pro."

In addition to the hospitality he showed, Beane said he was also impressed with how prepared Cooper was for the visit.

"We walk into one of their meeting rooms, you give this guy the clicker, and he was at peace," Beane said of watching Cooper show them practice film. "Just talking to us like a coach, 'This is what I was doing here. This is what he's got. This is what he's got. This is why I did this.' And we sat in there for over an hour, maybe an hour and fifteen minutes. Ricky (Proehl) got up on the board, did some stuff.

"And (Cooper said), 'Yep, we call that this.' Ricky would say, 'Yeah, we call that this.' And just watching them talk ball was kind of cool for me to see. I was like, 'Man, I'm sold.' We just didn't have the fourth pick in the draft that year."

Ten years later and no fourth overall pick needed, Beane finally has Cooper on his team.

Bills bring in kickers for workouts amid Bass' struggles

Beane confirmed that the Bills have brought in multiple kickers to the facility this week for a workout amid a struggling 2024 season for Tyler Bass. The fifth-year kicker has missed three FGs and two extra points through the first six games.

"We do have some kickers. We're gonna work them out this afternoon after practice," Beane said. "T-Bass would be the first to tell you it hasn't gone the way he would like it. And, quite frankly, the way we like it."

The GM shared that they've already had conversations with Bass about it this week.

"He's very aware. He knows we're working out people, and he understands it's a production business. And so, we have to make decisions, what's best for the team. And we want nothing more than Tyler to be our guy," he said.

Beane did not say whether or not the team will add a kicker to the practice squad before Sunday's game, but did say that they will "continue to look and monitor" the situation.