From Underdog to WR1: How Cooper Kupp Dominated Fantasy Football and Who Will Be Next?

Cooper cup was a third round pick who had an average start to his career with one 1,000 yard season throughout his first four seasons but that all changed in 2021 when Matthew Stafford was traded to the Rams and coer cup suddenly exploded winning offensive player of the year and the Triple Crown but how did a lowly wide receiver 2 explode to finish with 4395 PPR points let's find out more welcome to Fantasy pancake [Music] so yes welcome in fancy pancake this is our first ever episode and as you can see by the stuff around me I had to start off with a Rams player we are going to be looking at Cooper cups 2021 and trying to find out what we can learn from how he exploded to see if there's anyone that we can see might be able to do the same in 2024 so starting off by just looking by the Numbers Cooper cups 2021 was potentially the most dominant season we've ever seen from a wide receiver not just finishing with the Triple Crown but dominating in each of the three categories and this isn't just the case in the regular season if you include the postseason and the playoffs Cooper cup finished with the most receptions and receiving yards in a single season he is the only player to ever record 2,000 receiving yards in a whole season that is if you include the playoffs I for one was incredibly disappointed not to see him get it in that final game and become the first ever 2,000 yard wide receiver uh obviously I am incredibly biased on this topic but it's really nice to start off with something that I'm passionate about but one of the really important things here is to think how did this happen and can anyone do the same thing this year we're going to start with a little caveat probably not Cooper cups 2021 was maybe as I've said the greatest season a wide receiver has ever put together it's very unlikely that any wide receiver is going to do the same this season but there is one that I have in mind who fits a few of the categories that I've got in front of me and may be able to have a you know a pretty impressive 2024 but before we get want to get started I just want to ask you if you wouldn't mind liking subscribing and all of that classic YouTube business it's really going to help me as I grow the channel and try to continue to bring you great content throughout the course of this season and hopefully Beyond we've got some great guests coming up in the next few weeks so hopefully there's going to be lots of things for you to enjoy so there's three categories that I have in mind which led to Cooper Cup's explosion in 2021 and the first one is incredibly obvious Matthew Stafford was traded from the Lions to the Rams for two first round picks a second round pick and Jared gof which at the time didn't sound like a great part of the deal but now he's gone on to become a playoff quarterback again so all good for Jared but what is it about Matthew Stafford that meant that Cooper cup was able to explode in this way now we all heard the reports of them having breakfast together before the season started and we'd heard about the fact that they had this incredible chemistry but more so than that Matthew Stafford coming into the Rams meant that Shawn McVey was able to change his scheme to accommodate for Matthew Stafford strengths we'd known for a while that Shawn McVey had often had a very playaction heavy scheme partly due to the fact that he loved running those outside Zone runs but also due to the fact that Jared go worked best off of play action now with Matthew Stafford now in in charge of the offense this led sha mcve to be able to do something slightly different and it led to being more pass happy both in the open field but also when we got into the red zone as we saw with the massive amount of touchdowns that Cooper cup was able to score in 2021 the other thing which is definitely worth considering with Matthew Stafford is he's always been someone who's very happy to just lock in and feed one guy in particular now obviously this is the case when Matthew Stafford has had the two highest receiving yards in any single season with Calvin Johnson and then with Cooper cup so we know that he's someone that's just able to lock in and just fixate on one guy he's an incredibly talented quarterback he's an incredibly accurate quarterback and it also allowed Shawn mcfay to just open his offense up and run some of the plays that he'd wanted to run for a while but hadn't really been able to another important part to reflect on in terms of the way that the Playbook opened up was the way in which Shawn McVey was aligning Cooper Cup by basically the end of week two Cooper cup was aligning at every single possible wide receiver spot all across the formation but also out of the back field now this was a big innovation for 2021 that sha M brought into the offense um and it's something that we've definitely seen repeated since uh actually by some of that Shawn McVey coaching tree uh particularly Kevin o Connell uh in Minnesota and that's something we're going to come back to later about the way in which the Shawn McVey coaching tree is really important to this move but we actually saw this in training camp uh it was one of the many plays that the Rams were reported to have not allowed reporters to write about because they thought this was going to be an absolute treat when they got into the regular season and could run it for Real uh and this was definitely the case we saw in week one Cooper Cup score a touchdown running a route out of the background run running a will route that we normally see from from running backs but when you get someone out there with the route running chops that he has it made a huge difference so you can see the way in which that bringing in Matthew Stafford meant that the Playbook could open up so there's a lot of changes there to be seen in a very quick time period so the chemistry with Matthew Stafford is really one thing but then what about Cooper cup himself as a player what can we learn from him now Cooper cup was drafted in the third round uh back in 2017 uh there were some in the industry that had Cooper cup uh quite high up their boards ahead of wide receivers like Chris Godwin um and others you know taken in that class um but when the Rams did take him in the third round it was seen as a little bit of a reach what the Rams organization saw was a versatile player someone with great route running abil but also someone with Incredible in-game intelligence so that's someone who able to learn the Playbook by heart and sha McVey has quoted about Cooper cup as saying it's essentially like having someone play quarterback from the wide receiver position so that's definitely part of this that Cooper cup was able to be intelligent and Technical in his play once that offense had then opened up it meant that there was a huge amount of potential for him to explode because he was the number one wide receiver in the offense but also he had the intelligence and the game technique to continue to open up all you need to see is this clip of Cooper cup speaking after the game to tell you everything you need to know about how smart this guy is touchdown specifically your Defender went and blitzed what did you see there how were you able to to use that to your advantage yeah they had a little three deep fire zone brought the nickel off The Edge safety drop down uh it didn't look like they were doing a replacement fire zone so I knew at the back way we were going to get three push pushing through um that had an opportunity to kind of run in there if I could beat my guy and just had to beat the safety to the end zone another really important facet to look at in terms of Cooper Cup's ability to break out in 2021 and dominate Fantasy Football was the lack of other Targets on the roster when you look across the roster the player with the next highest receiving yards behind Cooper cups it's van jeffon finishing at around 800 yards they also had Robert Woods on the roster but he got injured at the mid point they also then had Odell Beckham Jr who came in later but mostly was a part to uh to play towards the playoffs and then in the Super Bowl in that incredible second half uh before he unfortunately got hurt I think he was probably on his path to winning Super Bowl MVP but it didn't matter so much we still won it as you can see from uh this flag this flag right here this guy right here so a really important facet here is knowing that Cooper cup could be fed targets by a quarterback who was willing to just abs absolutely feed one guy he had an offensive coach who was willing to just trust him in All facets of the game and he had barely on any other Target competition around him so Cooper cup was able to dominate fancy football because he had an unbelievable amount of targets but also trust from a head coach to give them to him and a talented quarterback that was able to feed him Targets in the right way and then he himself is was a talented and smart enough player to translate that into huge fancy success so this is the bit that you've all been waiting for who is the player that I think can dominate in 2024 in a Cooper cup like explosion now the first thing to look at is the quarterbacks so a new quarterback situation and we have one we have a couple across the league who have changed places but there's a really important one if he's healthy in Atlanta Kurt cousin is an incredibly talented quarterback Who as we've seen with Justin Jefferson in the last couple of years and even Adam thielen before that is willing to pick one guy and absolutely feed him the ball so then when we take a look at Atlanta a little bit deeper we see that they've actually brought in uh new offensive coaches from the Rams uh they've got rahee Morris as their head coach but the new offensive coordinator was the quarterback's coach of the Rams so you've got a new scheme coming in and someone from that same Shawn McVey tree who's willing to feed a wide receiver and very intelligent in the way that they can use New pieces and the way that they can make sure that talented players are schemed up to succeed and then when we look across the depth chart there's very little there outside of the wide receiver one darell Mooney is currently the wide receiver 2 uh they they traded for uh Rond Del Moore from the Cardinals you can tell how good a player he is by the fact they could barely even remember his name uh but he got injured before the season so at this point despite how much of an avid fancy player I am I don't even think I can name the Falcons wide receiver three obviously they have K pittz as well who is another player that I'm really excited about but there's very little Target competition out there and that's why I think that there's a chance a chance a chance that Drake London could be the next player to explode in 2024 when you look into his scouting report as well by Lance aine on nfl.com he was scouted as a very highly intelligent player with the motor to keep going he's versatile across all three areas of the field you know he's a he's a very good contested catcher but also is kind of a power slot more than anything else and a very good route Runner and he fits into that similar mold is a player who has been good but not great even though we know there's more potential there but I think Drake London fits the criteria of what we can learn from Cooper cups 2021 and potentially explodes to be a breakout star in 2024 thank you so much for watching I've been Lewis wood I'll see you next time [Music]