Despite playing with five different quarterbacks, Cleveland Browns WR Amari Cooper significantly outperformed his ADP last year. Once again, Cooper is being valued below where he finished the previous season. Should fantasy football managers be targeting the veteran receiver?
Amari Cooper’s 2024 Fantasy Forecast
For most of his career, Cooper was perennially overvalued. He would consistently finish below where he was drafted in fantasy points per game. Now that he’s older, that seems to have switched.
Cooper’s 15.1 fantasy points per game last year was the second-best mark of his career. However, I would argue his overall performance was his career best.
Amazingly, Cooper didn’t see heavy volume. His 23.6% target share was below what you’d expect from a WR1, especially one with no real target competition. He only caught 72 passes on 128 targets, the third-fewest receptions of his career.
Where Cooper impressed was in the efficiency department. He averaged a career-best 17.4 yards per reception. Cooper’s 14.1 aDOT (average depth of target) was the highest of his career. The same goes for his 2.35 yards per route run and 9.8 yards per target. All of those metrics ranked inside the top 15.
We want to draft fantasy assets that have high upside. Cooper has always had a ton of potential and talent but never that truly elite ceiling. At age 30, it’s hard to imagine him suddenly becoming a WR1, something he’s never been in his career.
While Cooper may lack WR1 upside, he’s been one of the safest players in fantasy for a long time. Outside of 2017, Cooper’s never been bad. That season, he averaged 11.3 fantasy points per game, finishing as the overall WR31.
Every other season of his career, he’s been between 13.3 and 15.4 points per game. Of his nine NFL seasons, Cooper’s finished between WR14 and WR21 in six of them.
Cooper’s final line last season was one of his best. However, it’s important to understand proper context. His 51.5-point explosion in Week 16 represented a large portion of his fantasy points. He scored in the single digits six times and had just four games of 20+ fantasy points.
I’m not a believer in Deshaun Watson. Yet, Cooper did not exactly struggle with Watson under center. He averaged 15.4 fantasy ppg in six games with Watson and the exact same figure in nine games without him.
Cooper is not an exciting player to draft. He’s been around a long time, and we know what he is. There’s no real potential for him to be this amazing elite WR1. But he’s going off the board as the WR25, No. 57 overall. Outside of 2017, he’s never finished that low.
Nothing is guaranteed in football, but Cooper is as close to a certainty as you can get for a player to outperform his ADP. I have him ranked as my WR25, and even that feels low.
I would still take younger WRs with more upside over Cooper, which is ultimately why I can’t rank him much higher. Nevertheless, Cooper is looking like a clear value pick and someone I will draft every time if his overall ADP remains this low.