Can Cooper Kupp remain the Rams' top receiver?
Yahoo Fantasy’s Matt Harmon and Dalton Del Don discuss the possible changes to L.A.’s offense and how it will affect its top wide receiver from last season. Subscribe to the Yahoo Fantasy Football Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Video Transcript
- Cooper Kupp, what's your situation, man? Can he succeed now with more half 12 personnel, half 11. Will he not be in the slot as much, and will he not be facing that zone? He may be fantastic in the zone and usually a star in the yards throughout run. But he's going to be asked be doing some different things this year.
- Yeah, Cooper Kupp is a tough one for me this year. Because over the course of reception perception history, no wide receiver ran against zone coverage at a higher rate than Cooper Kupp in 2018 and 2019. He faced his own coverage on 69% of his routes last year and was pressed on fewer than 10%. Like that's super-- I know that's not a lot of context there. But that is super rare.
You just don't see-- I mean, you'll see Cooper Kupp actually give an incoming pass rusher like a chip before going out on a flat route when no one's covering him or a slant round. Like no one is around him. He's just wide open in that zone. You just don't see a lot of receivers doing stuff like that, and it's just really hard to say-- like you mentioned, is that going to be the case, again, this year, if they are moving to more of that 12 personnel offense?
Like we saw his playing time kind of start to fall off a cliff. He's still decently productive or whatever. But I really worry a lot about him playing outside more, if that's what's going to happen. Because he's never finished above the 12th percentile in success rate verse man or press coverage at any point in his career.
So he's a guy that I'm OK-- I like Robert Woods a lot more this year. I know that the market still has Kupp, I think, going higher in terms of like ADP. It might be pretty close, but I'm a little nervous about Kupp. I think he's too valuable to this offense to really alter his role too much. I think Goff likes throwing to him so much that I don't think he's just going to suddenly disappear. That doesn't really happen, but I'm definitely worried about any sort of statistical ceiling out of him this year.
- Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you. I have Woods higher as well. I like the Rams receivers this year, just losing Gurley and the running game, the question mark in that defense going down, and that division I really think are going to be some shootouts. Even with Goff, Abad, a real life player, I think the fantasy stats are going to be there.