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Projecting Amari Cooper’s 2020 production

Yahoo Sports' Matt Harmon is joined by Rich Hribar from Sharp Football Analysis and they discuss what Cowboys WR Amari Cooper's production will look like. Subscribe to the Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Video Transcript

MATT HARMON: I'm gonna throw it back around on you. Is there anyone, after putting this article together and kind of breaking out tiers this way, was there anyone that you maybe changed your opinion on positively or negatively?

RICH HRIBAR: I think from a negative stance, I came out a little bit-- and he's a guy I've kind of waffled on. I get one foot in and one foot out on him, I mean, so regularly is Amari Cooper.

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MATT HARMON: Yeah.

RICH HRIBAR: He's the 13th wideout off the board in ADP, but he was 19th or lower in every single category out of these top 40 receivers a year ago. We know he way overshot his red zone production last year. He scored 44 red zone fantasy points. His expected total was just 18 points. He had the second largest discrepancy in his favor, and this was a guy that struggled in the red zone up until last year.

I'm curious to see what this additon of CeeDee Lamb does for Amari Cooper. Because where Amari Cooper has struggled the most is when he's had to face these physical corners, and he's had to go up against a lot of press man coverage. When you look at last year, you just congeal all his games against Marshon Lattimore, Jalen Ramsey, Stephon Gilmore, Darius Slay, I mean, he was completely erased in those games.

And now if you remove a guy like Randall Cobb off the board, who could only play one position in your offense-- he is your slot receiver-- now you've got three guys that can move around and have some versatility to them. Amari Cooper is not gonna play 60% of his routes in the slot. But if he can get to from 18% to 25% to 30%, that's gonna offer a lot more for a ceiling and put him in some right situations when Dallas faces some of these tougher cornerbacks. And they just added Darius Slay to their division.

MATT HARMON: Yeah, right.

RICH HRIBAR: A guy who kind of nuked him last year. So, I mean, he's a guy that the types of targets he gets don't really match up with his ADP. And there's some volatility in his game. But I am curious to see, like I said, the addition of CeeDee Lamb maybe unlocks some unlocked usage in getting him in the right types of sets and away from some of these press man coverage a little bit more. And he won't fully use the slot, but I'm curious to see what it does for him.

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