WR Amari Cooper, Dallas Cowboys
2018 Stats: 75 rec., 1,005 yards, 7 TD
It was a tale of two seasons for Cooper in 2018. In six games for the Oakland Raiders, he had just 22 catches for 280 yards and a touchdown with one target in each of his last two games. He was traded to the Dallas Cowboys for a first-round pick, and ended up with a bye in back-to-back weeks (Week 7 and Week 8).
In nine games with the Cowboys, Cooper had 53 catches for 725 yards and six touchdowns. The latter two marks led the team for the season.
From Week 1-Week 7, Cooper was WR67 in fantasy (full-point PPR scoring). From Week 9-Week 17, he was WR9 in full-point PPR. In standard scoring, he was WR65 and WR7 in each respective time frame.
During that nine-game sample with Dallas, Cooper set a career-high in yards per target (9.5) and had a 23.8 percent target share.
The Cowboys have generally had pretty vanilla roles for their wide receivers (see Dez Bryant, Cole Beasley). But as ESPN’s Todd Archer outlined, Cooper moves all over the formation and should continue to do so.
“Including his time with the Raiders last season, Cooper ran 428 routes, with 252 coming wide to the right, 176 wide to the left, 58 in the left slot, 57 in the right slot and five lined up tight to the left tackle, according to Next Gen Stats. During the organized team activities and minicamp, Cooper has mostly worked outside, but he has lined up in either slot and has gone in motion more.”
Dallas will still have a run-focused offense, but Cooper is a legit No. 1 wide receiver and Beasley’s departure in free agency leaves 87 vacated targets for the Cowboys.
Via Fantasy Football Calculator, Cooper is a third-round pick (pick 3.10, WR13) in 12-team standard scoring leagues and WR12 (pick 3.04) in full-point PPR. The WR1/WR2 borderline is about where he should be on draft day, but Cooper has legit top-10 upside this year in all scoring formats.
Amari Cooper 2019 Projection: 86 receptions for 1,161 yards, 8 TD
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