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The 2021 NFL season was a breakout year for Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp. He’d always been regarded as one of the better receivers in the game, but now he’s placed among the two or three best. This comes after proving to be easily Matthew Stafford's favorite target en route to a Super Bowl, and his 145 catches, 1,947 (!) yards, and 16 touchdowns definitely had a lot to do with that. In fact, no other player in football was targeted as much as Kupp in 2021, with Kupp having 22 more targets than anyone else, sitting at 191. This was certainly a boon for fantasy football managers who had Cooper Kupp.
We can expect much of the same to occur in 2022, with Robert Woods being traded to Tennessee and Odell Beckham Jr.'s potential return to LA still being up in the air. Even with Allen Robinson now in the fold, this lines up Kupp with a good chance at getting a huge amount of targets again, and potentially for at least part of the year, an increased target share, which is wild to think. Targets mean catches, and catches mean a whole lot of points for your team. That's the goal, so here's Cooper Kupp's full outlook for fantasy football in 2022.
Cooper Kupp 2022 Fantasy Football Outlook
If you're in a standard league, CBS Sports currently projects Cooper Kupp to have a stat line of 177 targets, 133 catches, 1,777 yards and 14 touchdowns, which should earn you a cool 263 points over the course of the season. Naturally, if you're in a points-per-reception league, just add the projected catches to the projected points total and you come out with 396 points in that format.
This, plus the fact that Odell Beckham Jr. would be out of service for a large portion of the season even if he does come back to the Rams, means that Kupp should absolutely be the very first receiver off the board in your snake draft without any hesitation. In keeper formats, anyone who doesn't keep him is insane, no matter the price. If we're talking a dynasty league, I'm not sure there's a trade package you could put together to get him off me. We're talking about the most valuable fantasy receiver in the league right now, and there is no one you shouldn't feel able to part with in order to acquire him if the opportunity presents itself.
Even in a worst-case scenario where he either misses a few games, or just doesn't play well in a few, you'd still expect Kupp to crack somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 yards and 10 touchdowns, which is just absolutely insane to have as a floor. A couple years ago, people thought the same thing about Michael Thomas when he snagged 149 passes in 2019, but Kupp is different. Not only is he catching loads of passes, he's doing it at all levels of the defense. That 2019 Michael Thomas season came with a lot of underneath routes, so for a receiver who doesn't have the speed to get a ton of YAC like Thomas, his points haul wasn't what it could've been.
Kupp is completely different in that regard. He has the hands to catch everything, evidenced by his 75.9% catch percentage in 2021, the speed to get plenty of YAC, and the route tree to show up and catch passes anywhere on the field at any time. He's also a favorite red zone target as well, so touchdowns come in bunches.
Barring major injury, Cooper Kupp should be one of about five or six players in the league who could win you a championship by themselves, no doubt about that. Take him at the earliest available opportunity every time.
