New Orleans Saints Brandin Cooks one of most enticing breakout candidates

There are plenty of interesting storylines to talk about in the offseason, with most relating to free agency and the draft, but one of my past time activities is looking at soon-to-be second-year players who could make a big jump as a sophomores. New Orleans Saints wide receiver Brandin Cooks was one of the best and most exciting players in college football at Oregon State, and he was so exciting that the Saints decided to trade up to make him Drew Brees‘s newest toy. Injuries held Cooks to just ten games, but the flashes he showed made him a key member of the offense.

Cooks caught 53 passes for 550 yards and three touchdowns as a rook, so the numbers don’t exactly jump off the page, especially since he averaged 10.4 yards per reception, which was the lowest of any of the team’s top four options. That’s because the Saints used Jimmy Graham and Cooks as safety valves frequently, as Drew Brees faced a lot more interior pressure than he’s used to; the Saints interior OL went from being one of the best in the league to being the weakest point of the entire offense last season.

There’s no point in drawing any conclusions about Cooks’s game by looking at his overall numbers, since he didn’t play enough and was only fourth on the team with 69 targets as a result. But if you start to look at everything on a per-play basis, you’ll start to realize that he was the No. 2 option in their offense. He and Graham were tied for the team lead with 5.3 receptions per game, so Cooks was already used more often than veteran Marques Colston. That said, he also had just 55 receiving yards per game, which was only fourth on the team.

The Saints didn’t give Cooks an advanced role in the offense, but that’s why he caught a whopping 76.8% of everything thrown at him, averaging 8.0 yards per target. It almost seemed like he replaced Colston as the team’s safety valve, because, per Pro Football Focus, Brees had a 110.9 QB Rating when target the OSU rookie. With just two drops, Cooks showed off some very safe hands, and that may have surprised some people.

Although the Saints didn’t use him often on deep routes, he did catch two touchdown passes on throws that were at least 20 yards downfield, per PFF, going 4-6 on those plays for 153 yards. He wasn’t used much in the slot either, but he was efficient there and was their second-most used slot guy behind Colston. We knew that Cooks has the ability to stretch the field or generate major YAC from slot plays, but he actually didn’t generate many yards after the catch, nor did he feature much as a playmaker; the Saints mostly used him as a possession guy on the outside.

I expected Cooks to be more inconsistent as as rookie, so his 76.8% catch rate came as a surprise to me. Instead of being the flashy playmaker who drops passes but makes up for them by turning short passes into long ones, he was actually the guy who bailed Brees out of trouble. When he was asked to go deep, though, Cooks, as the 4-6-153-2 line suggests, executed his job as well as you could have asked.

The play above was a 50-yard touchdown against the Green Bay Packers in the Saints most memorable game of the season, and it’s an absolutely fantastic play from Cooks, who burned Micah Hyde and a corner on this one. Cooks is one of the fastest and most explosive receivers in the game, and the separation he created on that one was impressive, to say the least. He had a 31-yard touchdown against the San Francisco 49ers on another go-route this season, so he has the short-area quickness to boss the underneath game and the long speed to break free on deeper passes.

He’s slippery while silky, explosive while also safe, if we can trust the high catch rate and low drop rate from his rookie season. There are two things that should scare opponents going into the 2014 season, while they should delight those who have him in dynasty leagues. Firstly, the Saints didn’t get the most out of Brandin Cooks from a play-calling standpoint, since they couldn’t be as aggressive with him due to the worse blocking. I wonder if they also didn’t feel as comfortable with his route-running, so that’s something to watch for in year two.

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But here’s what should scare everyone the most: Cooks’s long-term value. Many people are starting to realize just how valuable young receivers are in the draft, because those are the guys who are more likely to develop into beasts because of the age difference. It’s uncanny for a 21-year-old to play as well as Cooks did, especially since he only dropped two passes. He’ll be 21 until late September, meaning that the New Orleans Saints can get a lot out of him as he grows.

That’s even more exciting than his 40 time, because this is a guy who caught less than three passes just once in ten games and had five receptions or more in seven of his ten contests. Those numbers speak volumes about his consistency, and he, Graham, and Kenny Stills look like the top three options going forward. It’s scary to think that the Saints can burn people deep with an elite deep threat in Stills, dominate mis-matches with the game’s second-best tight end, use the steady Colston, and then have a ridiculous weapon in Cooks who can produce as many mis-matches as Graham.

Think about it, the Saints have a wide receiver who has shown he can move the ball on the outside, destroy people with his agility and quickness over the middle, and break defenses over the top. The upside in Cooks is strong, and he didn’t show as many holes in his game as a rookie as some thought. He’ll definitely have to work on his route-running, but he did look a bit more physical than I thought and has the raw tools and fluidity to become an above-average route-runner.

There are plenty of exciting players to watch around the league, especially second-year receivers from last year’s draft class, but Cooks has to be one of the most exciting due to his age, skill-set, upside, and the offense in which he plays.

Next: Where do the Saints rank among franchises with the best QBs in history?