Oakland Raiders traded wide receiver Amari Cooper to the Dallas Cowboys on Oct. 22, 2018. On Monday, the Raiders, now in Las Vegas, got him back.
A free agent since March 12, the former Alabama All-American signed a one-year contract with the Raiders, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, NFL Network and ESPN reported.
Las Vegas will kick off its 2025 season on Sept. 7 against the New England Patriots.
Although the Raiders have not announced the deal with Cooper, reports of the signing arrived after wide receiver Jakobi Meyers asked Las Vegas to trade him over stalled contract negotiations.
Meyers led the Raiders’ wide receivers last season with 87 receptions for 1,027 yards and four touchdowns. He’s on the top of the Las Vegas depth chart at the position along with Tre Tucker and Dont’e Thornton Jr. Tucker had 47 receptions for 539 yards and three touchdowns in 2024, and Thornton is a fourth-round rookie from Tennessee.
In his 10th NFL season, Cooper had 44 receptions for 547 yards and four touchdowns in 2024, the least productive season of his career. The Cleveland Browns traded Cooper to the Buffalo Bills six games into the 2024 campaign. In addition to eight regular-season games for Buffalo, Cooper had six receptions for 41 yards in three playoff games with the Bills.
Cooper entered the NFL as the fourth pick in the 2015 draft after he had set an SEC single-season record with 124 receptions for Alabama in 2014.
In his first two seasons with Oakland, Cooper had 155 receptions for 2,223 yards and 11 touchdowns and went to the Pro Bowl after each. But when Cooper’s production dropped to 48 receptions for 680 yards and seven touchdowns in 2017 and he started 2018 with 22 receptions for 280 yards and one touchdown in six games, the Raiders traded the wide receiver to the Dallas Cowboys for a first-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft.
On March 11, 2022, the Cowboys traded Cooper and a sixth-round pick in the 2022 NFL Draft to the Browns for fifth- and sixth-round picks in 2022.
Since leaving the Raiders, Cooper added Pro Bowl selections in 2018, 2019 and 2023 and 1,000-yard receiving seasons in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2023 to those of his first two years in the league.
In 154 NFL regular-season games, Cooper has 711 receptions for 10,033 yards with 64 touchdowns. In NFL history, Cooper ranks 59th in receptions, 57th in receiving yards and 74th in touchdown receptions.
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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on X at@AMarkG1.
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