CLEVELAND, Ohio — Amari Cooper caught a popup on Sunday with former Guardians manager Terry Francona watching the game from a suite at Cleveland Browns Stadium.
“I always wanted to play baseball because my friends used to play baseball but baseball and track are the same season,” Cooper said, “so from the time I was six until I went to college, I was always in a sport. Football, basketball, track, football, basketball, track.”
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Track was his least favorite, by the way. He said he was forced to do it.
“My coach would come knock on my door, tell Mom, ‘Hey, if he don’t run track, he’s going to be out in the street, I know you don’t want that,’” Cooper said, “and she was always at work, so she was like, ‘Yeah, you have to run track with him because he’s going to make sure you’re not getting in trouble.’ It always ran the same season as baseball, so I never played baseball.”
Cooper actually credits basketball with him making the touchdown catch he did with 6:48 remaining in the second quarter, a ball that appeared to deflect off the helmet of Cardinals defensive lineman Dante Stills up in the air. Cooper went up over cornerback Antonio Hamilton Sr. to snag the ball for a touchdown and a 10-0 Browns lead.
“Basketball helps you with that,” he said, “constantly having to box guys out, get rebounds, you learn how to catch those passes.”
Cardinals fans looking for sympathy on the play won’t get any from Browns fans, of course, after what happened a week ago in Seattle when a third-and-3 deflection off a helmet ended up in the arms of Seahawks safety Julian Love for an interception that set up Seattle’s game-winning drive.
“(Browns tight end Harrison Bryant) said the football gods owed us one,” Cooper said. “So there you have it.”
The play capped a drive in which the Browns ran or had a quarterback scramble on 10 of 11 plays, the lone pass thrown the one Cooper caught off a deflection.
“You can look at the EPA and all those things about running the ball versus passing the ball,” left guard Joel Bitonio said, “but I think it’s hard to quantify what running the ball does to a defense, tires them out, tires the pass, rush out, all those type of things. So I think it gets us in a rhythm on offense too. As a lineman you get that feeling of hitting somebody and getting in a rhythm. So we love those type of drives and as long as they score touchdowns, it’s a positive.”
Kareem Hunt led the rushing attack on the drive, carrying five times for 23 yards. Pierre Strong carried twice for five yards, Jerome Ford had a one yard run and Deshaun Watson scrambled twice for nine yards.
“That’s what you run the ball for, to wear the defense down,” Cooper said. “You’re trying to get those four yards a pop and continuously wear them down, make them tired. I mean, those guys will admit, the defensive guys will admit, if you know some of those guys out there, like ‘I’m tired.’ That’s what you do it for. So yeah, I could sense it for sure.”
Then the drive ended with the bounce of the ball going the Browns way — but it wasn’t just a fortuitous bounce. Cooper had something to do with it, too.
“He’s living right,” tight end David Njoku said. “He’s an exceptional athlete and his awareness is absurd, it’s second to none. So when it got tipped, I looked and I saw him not even break stride and he caught that ball and it was phenomenal.”
Cooper said the play was about being able to follow the trajectory of the ball and track it better than the cornerback.
“The cornerback, Ham, I played with him (in Oakland),” Cooper said. “So we kind of talked about it a little bit during a timeout or something like that. He was trying to locate it, but fortunately enough, I saw it the whole way. So I went and I grabbed it.”
When Watson saw the ball hit the ground, he was hoping for one of two outcomes.
“Either make it hit the ground or (No.) 2 get it and (No.) 2 got it,” he said.
A rebound, a pop fly, the football gods smiling on them. However you want to define it, it worked out in the Browns’ favor.
Or — maybe — the Browns just made the play that needed to be made in that moment.
“I never listen to the football gods,” right tackle Dawand Jones said. “I just feel like we played better.”