RADIO
Brandin Cooks 2018 Outlook: Deep Plays Will Be The Key
6 years agoBrandin Cooks officially has his contract extension and will call Los Angeles home for the next five years. This should help settle his value long term, but what can we expect in 2018? A WR1 season may be tough to come by, even though he will be playing in a great offense with plenty of talent around him. The main factor that could provide limitations is the short passing game for the Rams.
Last season Jared Goff’s average depth of target was 8.5 yards, which ranked 18th out of quarterbacks with at least 300 passing attempts. The Rams leaned on the short-passing game with Todd Gurley, Cooper Kupp and Robert Woods. For the Rams to continue moving forward with their offense, they will need to open up the passing game and start throwing deep more. In 2017, Goff wasn’t bad on deep passes. He finished with a 99.5 passer rating and 35.4 percent accuracy on deep passes. Cooks won’t be a WR1 in 2018 as he acclimates to his new team, but he will haul in enough big plays to be a good play against bad secondaries. If you draft him as your WR2, make sure you have a depth of receivers with excellent floors behind him.
