Phew!

AFC Championship Game: Buffalo Bills v Kansas City Chiefs | Aaron M. Sprecher/GettyImages

Rewind back to the trade deadline. The Kansas City Chiefs needed help at wide receiver after Rashee Rice went down with an injury and one of the names they had been linked to potentially adding was Amari Cooper, who ended up getting dealt to the Buffalo Bills.

After the Cooper domino fell, the Chiefs pivoted and traded for DeAndre Hopkins, who went on to provide the needed help during the regular season. Hopkins wasn’t the superstar that he once had been but he was still an important piece on Kansas City’s offense, tallying 437 yards and four touchdowns in his 10 games and five starts in the regular season.

Cooper, on the other hand, did not do much for his new team. The former first-round pick didn’t even manage 300 yards in the regular season and found the end zone just two times as a Bill. Now that the 2024 regular season is over, Cooper is a free agent and with one week of free agency in the books, he’s still on the market looking for a new NFL home.

Well, Matthew Berry might know exactly why Cooper is still unsigned. When responding to a Commanders social media account that was discussing why their team should take a flier on the former first-rounder, Berry wrote back, “Amari is done. That’s not me talking. That’s from an offensive coach of a former team of his I spoke to at the Combine.”

Chiefs chose right by trading for DeAndre Hopkins and not Amari Cooper

Chiefs fans are all too familiar with Cooper, as he was a first-round pick by the Raiders a decade ago and played his first four seasons in Oakland before getting dealt to Dallas. Cooper played for the Cowboys for another four years before getting sent to Cleveland. Cooper was traded from the Browns to the Bills in a hope to improve the Bills’ offense and give them a legitimate run at a Super Bowl but that’s not what happened.

Maybe things would have been different for Cooper had he been traded to K.C. instead but if Berry’s comments that he relayed through a former coach are correct, it makes the front office look even smarter for not bringing him in. Guess playing for the Bills really hit Cooper hard, huh?