Will Brandin Cooks Go Over/Under 850.5 Receiving Yards? (2020 NFL Player Prop Bets)
After sending star wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins to the Cardinals, the Texans backfilled their vacant WR1 position by trading for former-Ram Brandin Cooks. Coming off a down year in Los Angeles, DraftKings has set the line on Cooks’ 2020 yardage total at 850.5 (-110).
With no preseason games leading up to the regular season, and coming off an offseason affected by COVID-19, the consensus among NFL prop bettors has been to fade players joining new offenses. Like Cooks.
While I tend to agree with that strategy overall, I believe Cooks’ line is an outlier and presents a substantial opportunity to take the over. Let’s look at why.
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Brandin Cooks receiving yards 850.5 (Odds via DraftKings)
- Over (-110)
- Under (-110)
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The Player
Brandin Cooks is good. He just had a rough 2019. He set career-lows in nearly every statistical category and dealt with his fifth known concussion in only six NFL seasons. He’s also a member of his fourth different team in the last five years, so, understandably, he’s a bit of an afterthought heading into 2020.
He’ll start the year as the de-facto WR1 in Houston, vying for targets with Will Fuller and Randall Cobb. All three Texans wide receivers have injury concerns, but the team doesn’t seem at all concerned with Cooks’ concussion history. Despite five documented concussions, Cooks has only missed two games in the last five seasons and has played in all 16 games four times in the previous five years. And he’s been incredibly productive when healthy. In the four seasons where Cooks has played in all 16 games, he’s averaged 1149.3 receiving yards, and just once saw more than 120 targets.
If he’s able to stay on the field like Houston expects him to, there’s a chance he could see an uptick in targets from his career 16-game average of 112.4.
The Opportunity
Cooks has landed in a historically high-volume situation in Houston, so high-volume that he’s got a chance to surpass his yardage total with a week or two to spare.
Deshaun Watson has always relied heavily on his top option. In their three years together, Watson targeted DeAndre Hopkins an average of 162.0 times per year, ranking him top-five each year. Hopkins also saw a 30.9% target share in 2019, the second-highest in the league.
Is Brandin Cooks DeAndre Hopkins? No. But will the volume still be there for Cooks as he fills the same position Hopkins occupied? Absolutely. Especially if Fuller or Cobb are forced to miss time, which has been the case quite frequently throughout their careers. Fuller has missed 20 of a possible 64 games (31.3%) in his career, and Cobb hasn’t played a full-16 since 2015. Expect Cooks to soak up those potential targets if either is forced to miss time.
Cooks should also expect to see a heavy dose of looks down the field, which are good for yardage totals and should help him flirt with the 1,000-yard-mark. Fuller has historically been Houston’s go-to target down the field, but Watson attempted the fourth-most deep balls in 2019, so there are plenty of home-run balls to go around. And Cooks is just as capable as Fuller at making big plays down the field; he averages 14.3 yards per reception in his career, which happens to be the same as Fuller.
Final Thoughts
I believe Brandin Cooks is still a 1,000-yard receiver, and I think he fell into the perfect situation to revive his career after a difficult 2019 in Los Angeles. He’s caught 65.0% of his career targets, and if he conservatively sees 100 looks from Watson in 2020, he’ll need to average just 13.1 yards per catch to surpass 850 yards. He hasn’t averaged fewer than 13.5 YPC since he was a rookie.
I’m counting on a bounce-back campaign from Cooks in his first year in Houston, playing with a fantastic quarterback in Deshaun Watson, and I think he comfortably surpasses his season-long total of 850.5 yards.
Pick: Brandin Cooks Over 850.5 Receiving Yards (-110)
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Mike Wagenman is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him on Twitter @mjwags23.