Cleveland Browns WR Amari Cooper overcame several hurdles to put together a strong final line last season. But was his 2023 season as helpful for fantasy football managers as the final numbers suggest? How does this impact Cooper’s value in 2024 Best Ball drafts?
Amari Cooper’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
It’s hard to believe we’re headed into Cooper’s 10th professional season. Perhaps even more unbelievable is the fact that he’s turning just 30 years old.
While wide receivers typically start declining more toward age 32 now, Cooper’s been in the league a long time. It’s definitely worth considering. However, we just haven’t seen any evidence just yet.
Cooper is coming off what I would consider the best season of his career. Technically, he averaged more fantasy points per game in 2019, but the full body of work last year was Cooper’s best.
The fascinating part about Cooper’s 2023 season is he wasn’t really a heavy-volume receiver. He only caught 72 passes on 128 targets, the third-fewest receptions of his career.
Where Cooper impressed was in the efficiency department, where 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.
The biggest knock on Cooper is he’s never been a WR1. He’s definitely a viable NFL WR1, but he’s never posted a top-12 finish in fantasy. With that said, he’s also never really been a disaster.
Outside of 2017, Cooper has 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, he’s finished between WR14 and WR21 in six of them.
Should You Draft Cooper in 2024 Best Ball Leagues?
Last year, Cooper was able to thrive despite playing with four different quarterbacks. Of course, I would be remiss to not point out how impactful his 51.5-point effort was in Week 16. As great as Cooper’s total numbers were, he wasn’t that reliable on a weekly basis.
Cooper scored in the single digits six times. He had just four games of 20+ fantasy points. Depending on your school of thought, he was either disappointing or the perfect Best Ball receiver.
Fantasy managers concerned about Cooper having Deshaun Watson for a full season shouldn’t be overly concerned. While we’d rather have Joe Flacco, Cooper was just fine with Watson. He averaged 15.4 fantasy ppg in six games with Watson, and the exact same thing in nine games without him.
KEEP READING: Best Ball Rankings 2024
Currently, Cooper is being drafted well outside the top 24 wide receivers. For him to bust at his current cost, he would quite literally have to have the worst season of his career.
The Browns’ acquisition of Jerry Jeudy does upgrade the team’s WR2, but I would hardly call Jeudy a threat to Cooper’s volume. With minimal target competition, there’s just no reason to predict Cooper to fall off a cliff. As a result, fantasy managers should be eyeing up Cooper in Best Ball drafts.