Amari Cooper sends crystal clear message to Browns over new contract demands

Amari Cooper's probably going to get paid soon. It feels like more a matter of when, and not if. He's coming off arguably the best year of his career – 72 catches, 1250 receiving yards, five touchdowns – and is going into the last season of the five-year deal he signed back when he was on the Cowboys.

He's an integral piece to a Browns offense that still faces its fair share of questions heading into the season, which gives him all the more leverage when it comes to sitting down and hammering out a new deal. He's also not hiding from that fact, which Twitter got to see first hand thanks to a weird influencer.

The "I'm trying to get paid" bit is making tons of headlines, which is obvious. Even if it wasn't late June, a player publicly saying that in such a matter-of-fact way was always going to be enough for people to write around. It's certainly enough for me to write around!

But more importantly, let's focus for a quick paragraph or two on the influencer here trying to goad Cooper into racing him. Maybe don't do that? It's like that scene in 'Atlanta' when Earn tries to race Michael Vick. The guy trying to race Cooper is the face of a gambling company's TikTok, which is as predictable as it is bleak. You can call Cooper bro as much as you want, he's not going to race you for the content. Honestly, good on Cooper for being as chill about this interaction as he is.

Just deeply cringey stuff. Hopefully Cooper gets paid what he deserves and [extremely grumpy old man voice] doesn't have to spend any more time sitting around pretending to take a race challenge from a TikToker seriously. Training camp can't get here soon enough. Maybe they'll race then! (They won't race then.)