The Fantasy Case Against Cooper Kupp

The Super Bowl LVI MVP can’t possibly match his unbelievable 2021 statistical season.

The summer is nearly here, meaning we’re getting closer to the start of fantasy football drafts. Success in those drafts will come from landing terrific bargains in the middle to late rounds while avoiding players who could see their numbers decline compared to 2021. That latter exercise isn’t easy, however, especially in the case of players who are among the elite at their position or are coming off breakout seasons in the stat sheets.

Case in point: In 2020, Alvin Kamara went absolutely bananas with nearly 380 fantasy points. Had he not missed a Week 17 game due to COVID-19, he would have had a chance to score over 400 fantasy points on the season. As a result, he was the third overall pick, on average, in most 2021 drafts. The aftermath, though, wasn't as good.

Kamara scored 12 fewer total touchdowns, 143.1 fewer fantasy points and averaged 6.14 fewer points compared to his 2020 campaign. It was a massive drop off in terms of his overall production, but it wasn’t completely unpredictable. In fact, those of you who read my “The Fantasy Case Against” series last season might have seen it coming.

The series highlights big-name players or those coming off enormous statistical years who could see a surprising decline in fantasy success. Like I always say, the only thing that’s predictable about the NFL is that it’s oftentimes unpredictable. And as much as we love our fantasy heroes out on the gridiron, no one is ever guaranteed to succeed.

In fact, 2021 articles in the series on Derrick Henry, Saquon Barkley, Julio Jones, Kenny Golladay, David Montgomery, Darrell Henderson, Travis Kelce and Brandon Aiyuk all warned of potential declines in point production or concerns over possible injuries.

To some degree or another, all of those warnings, if heeded, would have resulted in drafting a better fantasy football team. Whether it meant waiting a round to draft the player or avoiding him altogether, these players (among others) proved that even some of the truly elite players in the league can fail to meet our heightened expectations.

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We’ll start off the 2022 “The Fantasy Case Against” series with Cooper Kupp.

2021 Season
Kupp is coming off the greatest fantasy season of all time among wide receivers, as his 439.5 points shattered the previous record of 414 points scored by Jerry Rice during the 1995 campaign. That impressive point total was also more than any other player in the league during the 2021 season, including quarterbacks! Kupp scored 20-plus points 14 times, including six games where he finished with 30-plus points. He also had 100-plus yards in 11 games, but his 1,947 receiving yards still fell 17 yards short of the NFL record 1,964 yards set by Lions superstar wide receiver Calvin Johnson in 2012.

Did You Know?
Kupp and Rice are the lone wideouts in NFL history to record 400-plus PPR points in a single season. Only three other wide receivers, Antonio Brown (2014, 2015), Randy Moss (2007) and Marvin Harrison (2002), have scored more than 380 fantasy points in a season. Another three receivers, Julio Jones (2015), Michael Thomas (2019) and Herman Moore (1995) have scored 370-plus points. Moss also hit that mark in 2003.

Historical Trends
In the season following his then record-breaking year, Rice experienced a decline of 594 receiving yards, seven touchdown catches and 118.9 fantasy points (7.5 points per game). He still finished first in points among wideouts, but his level of production was significantly lower than his previous campaign. And Rice is the greatest wideout ever!

Just one wideout (Brown, +1.3) has put up more points after scoring 375-plus points (2014-2015). However, he scored 80.9 fewer points in 2016 after scoring 388.2 in 2015.

Moss, who scored 375-plus points twice in his career, scored an average of 164.2 fewer points in the following seasons. Harrison (-107.7), Jones (-115.2), Thomas (-290.7) and Moore (-80) all scored fewer points the campaign after posting 375-plus points. Even if we exclude Thomas, who missed nine games due to injuries after his career campaign, the average decline a wideout has seen after a year with 375-plus points is 118 points.

Coaching & Personnel Changes
The Super Bowl champion Rams will continue to have their offense led by head coach Sean McVay, though the team will have a new offensive coordinator in Liam Coen. He spent three seasons on the Rams offensive staff (2018-2020), serving as the wide receivers coach for two seasons and an assistant quarterback coach for one year. He had a pair of 1,000-yard wideouts in each of his two years as the coach of that position.

The Rams traded Robert Woods to the Titans in the offseason, replacing him with Allen Robinson. The veteran has a trio of 1,000-yard seasons on his NFL resume and caught at least 98 passes in two of his last three campaigns with the Chicago Bears. Robinson will start alongside Kupp and Van Jefferson in three-receiver sets, which the Rams ran on an NFL-high 894 of their 1,058 offensive snaps (84%) last season.

Verdict
I’m not saying anything bold or groundbreaking when I suggest that Kupp has no real chance to duplicate the bananas numbers he produced last season. None. It’s the ultimate example of what I always tell fantasy fans … “beware the magical season!”

Kupp was so unbelievably productive last year, however, that he could see a decline of seven to eight fantasy points per game and still average 18 to 19 points in 2022. That sort of projection would put Kupp on the same level as Justin Jefferson, who averaged 19.4 points per game and finished fifth in fantasy points among wideouts last season.

I’d argue that getting that level of production from Kupp in 2022, even though it would mean a 6.5-point decline compared to last season, would be a huge win for managers. Keep in mind that a drop in targets is a virtual guarantee, as Kupp is one of just nine wideouts in the Super Bowl era to have 190-plus targets. With Robinson in the mix, that total could drop by 40-50 (Kupp never had more than 134 targets previously).

With all of this said, Kupp is still the No. 1 wide receiver in fantasy football. I would have moved him down to the WR2 if Davante Adams had remained in Green Bay, but he was dealt to the Raiders. With an average draft position (ADP) of 2.8 in the National Fantasy Football League Championships, the high-stakes folks are still high on Kupp and that’s not surprising. What would be a surprise is if Kupp comes within even four or five points of his 25.9 points a game average from last season. It isn’t a likely scenario.

If you go into your drafts knowing that you’re not getting the 2021 version of Kupp, you’ll likely be satisfied with the results. But keep in mind that his production will very likely decline significantly, even if he remains a top-five PPR wideout at season’s end.

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Michael Fabiano is an award-winning fantasy football analyst on Sports Illustrated and a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA) Hall of Fame. Click here to read all his articles here on SI Fantasy. You can follow Michael on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram for your late-breaking fantasy news and the best analysis in the business!