Bills GM' Brandon Beane details what has impressed him about Amari Cooper for nearly a decade

When the Buffalo Bills took a massive swing to acquire wide receiver Amari Cooper from the Cleveland Browns, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. It's the type of talent and veteran presence that has a chance to elevate the Bills passing attack to an elite tier.

Brandon Beane, general manager of the Bills , has had Cooper on his radar for nearly a decade.

"So I went with Ricky Proehl, who was our receiver coach, and we went to dinner, and Ricky and I got back in a truck, and we were like, 'man, [Cooper] didn't like us.' That's just who he is. He's just very quiet, very reserved. The restaurant was a little bit loud," Beane began recalling his meeting with Cooper before the 2015 NFL Draft. "The next day though, we pulled into Alabama's football offices, and there was a little gate. And sometimes you get there and you show up to work them out, and the kids aren't there yet, or they didn't tell you the right place to go on these big college campuses. We pulled right where he told us, and he had something to open the gate for us, he told us right where to park. I was like, 'this guy's a pro.'"

"We walk in, and we were talking at dinner the night before about some of the routes that he runs at practice but had not run in games. And we're like, 'can we see you run those routes?' And so he had practice stuff. He beat us in there and had the film uploaded. We walk into one of their meeting rooms and you give this guy the clicker, and he was like, at peace, 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 15," Beane continued. "Ricky got up on the board, and just watching them talk ball was kind of cool for me to see. I was like, 'Man, I'm sold.' You know, we just didn't have the fourth pick of the draft that year."

Cooper remains the highest-drafted wide receiver to ever come out of Alabama, being selected fourth overall by the Oakland Raiders in 2015.

"He's probably not going to be a long interview for you guys when you get to talk to him, but he loves ball," Beane said when asked about what Cooper brings to Buffalo. "He's a very, very smart outside perimeter receiver, not that he can't play inside, but a very good route runner, smooth, you know, he can stretch the field vertically. I think he was high 4.3's [40-yard dash] when he came out. You still see that. He's had a high average per catch throughout his career. He had a 200 and something yard game late in the season with Flacco last year. I think four of his last five years, yeah, I mean, he's on the backside of his career, but four of his last five I think he went for over 1100 [receiving yards]."

Yes Beane, you're correct. Cooper went over 1,100 receiving yards in four of his last five seasons, with the only year he didn't reach that mark being in his final season in Dallas.

Cooper brings a soft-spoken but intelligent, elite route-running veteran wide receiver to the Bills that will be a natural fit once he's up to speed on the playbook. Given his intelligence and experience in the game, I don't expect it to take long before he makes an impact.

Related: Bills’ trade for Amari Cooper gives them something they thought they didn’t need but clearly did

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