2021 Cooper Kupp Fantasy Football Player Profile

It’s that time of year once again! Football Absurdity will bring you a breakdown of every notable fantasy football-relevant player throughout June, July, and August. We’ve run through 20 quarterbacks and 40 running backs; that means it’s time to get to the deepest and most varied position! That’s right, we’re on to the wide receivers! Today we take a look at the 1B to Robert Woods’s 1A in Los Angeles. That’s right, it’s the 2021 Cooper Kupp fantasy football preview!

Cooper Kupp ADP & AAV:

Average Draft Position (HPPR): WR20, Pick 54
Average Auction Value: $5.5 (WR22)

Cooper Kupp Statistics:

2021 Cooper Kupp Fantasy Football Overview:

Cooper Kupp had somewhat of a down year last year if you look at the fantasy points. He finished as WR34 in fantasy points per game. But why did that happen? Did he suddenly get bad at football, or did getting saddled with Jared Goff suddenly make Kupp bad?

In 2019, Kupp averaged 72.6 yards per game, on 12.4 yards per reception (5.9 receptions, 70% catch rate). He finished the year with ten touchdowns. While the touchdowns mostly clustered toward the end of the year, I am not here to shame cluster luck.

In 2020, Kupp averaged 6.1 receptions for 10.6 yards per reception, a 74% catch rate. So, on the surface, all he lost was… 1.5 yards per reception? That doesn’t seem too bad, and it seems like something that should get offset by the increased catch rate.

The culprit for Kupp’s down year, and the reason why I’m in on him this season? Bad touchdown luck. Kupp ended the year with just three touchdowns on 124 targets. That came out to just a 2.4% touchdown rate on the year, down significantly from his 7.5% touchdown rate in 2019 and 10.9% in 2018. Kupp had five targets in the ten zone in 2020, but just 10 in 2019 and 6 in 2018. The ten zone targets alone don’t tell the story, because even if they normalized he still ends up around five touchdowns. There’s still a gap therebetween his ten zone targets and touchdown rate.

So, this all seems to boil down to bare, uncut bad touchdown luck.

2021 Cooper Kupp Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:

Cooper Kupp Auction Value: $7
Draft Ranking: Find out for your league settings in a Beersheet!

Like his teammate, Robert Woods, a new quarterback in Los Angeles is driving down 2021 Cooper Kupp’s fantasy football value. But, I’m not quite sure why? We all know at this point that Jared Goff has a… limited ceiling… as an NFL quarterback. Yet, we are bumping down a guy who caught at least four passes in 13-of-15 games last year (14-of-16 if you count the NFC Wild Card Game).

Bad luck and good luck both have a way of evening out. Kupp’s 2020 three touchdown campaign was karmic balance for his five-touchdowns-in-five-games streak that ended his 2019. The universe should reward him by evening that scale. Adding an Actually Good QB like Matthew Stafford to the mix certainly doesn’t hurt matters, either.

Best Case Scenario:

He becomes Matthew Stafford’s go-to end zone target, and he returns double-digit touchdowns.

Worst Case Scenario:

Tyler Higbee becomes Matthew Stafford’s go-to end zone target, and he returns double-digit touchdowns.

Check out all our 2021 player profiles, here.

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[Statistics are sourced from pro-football-reference.com, airyards.com, and ftnfantasy.com]

[Image Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Cooper_Kupp.jpg, cropped under CC BY SA 2.0]