2021 Brandin Cooks 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 get to a wide receiver who deserves a lot more respect in fantasy football circles than he currently gets. His team is a mess, but he is one of the most consistent and talented wide receivers in the NFL. It’s time to take a look at 2021 Brandin Cooks!

Brandin Cooks ADP & AAV:

Average Draft Position (HPPR): WR38, Pick 100
Average Auction Value: $1.3 (WR46)

Brandin Cooks Statistics:

2021 Brandin Cooks Fantasy Football Overview:

Look, I get it. “LOL Texans” and whatnot. We don’t know who his QB will be, we don’t know what the wide receiver depth chart will look like, and we don’t know what the team’s strategy will be. I don’t care about any of those things. Brandin Cooks is just good at football. He’s spent his career bouncing around the league, producing at least 1,100 yards in five of his six years. That one year he didn’t, his year was marred by concussions and various other injuries.

His one injury-marred year was 2019, and now people who tell you don’t worry about Will Fuller want to tell you that Brandin Cooks’s concussions are a cause for concern. They aren’t; you can adjust your on-field play to avoid large hits. Will Fuller can’t adjust his play to stop his hamstring from peeling off the bone like smoked ribs every third game.

Even if it’s not Deshaun Watson, who is coming for those targets? Keke Coutee? Nico Collins? Jordan Akins? Please. Those are all jokers to the throne. A lion like Cooks worries not about the affairs of sheep.

2021 Brandin Cooks Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:

Brandin Cooks Auction Value: $1
Draft Ranking: Find out for your league settings in a Beersheet!

Since he joined the league in 2015, five active players have at least five 1,000 yard seasons: Cooks, Mike Evans, Amari Cooper, DeAndre Hopkins, and Julio Jones. Those other three players have an average ADP of pick 34, as the twelfth wide receiver off the board. You can get those guys, or get Cooks who has some warts, but the same upside 70 picks later. Brandin Cooks is a smash pick for me in every single draft that I have, and I have no issues taking him in round eight to make sure that you get him.

Simply put: get Brandin Cooks, he’s good. The quarterback situation can bother you, I won’t begrudge you that point. But the three players going before Brandin Cooks by ADP have Ryan Fitzpatrick (Logan Thomas), Drew Lock (Jerry Jeudy) and Zach Wilson (Michael Carter) tossing them the football. So, it’s not exactly like we are giving up on high-end quarterback options to lean into the Houston Texans’ QB Experience, here.

Best Case Scenario:

By my first round of projections, Brandin Cooks is the WR18 on the season. This assumes somewhat competent quarterback play with Tyrod Taylor.

Worst Case Scenario:

A nasty hit derails his season, as his concussion symptoms rear their ugly head once again. Either that or Davis Mills throws him the ball.

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/1/1f/Brandin_Cooks_LA_RAMS_%2849133462747%29.jpg, cropped under CC BY-SA 2.0]