RP Summer Lookback: Omar Cooper Jr. Goes to the Jets

**Matt Harmon** (0:00)
This is Reception Perception The Show. Now, James Koh and Matt Harmon.

**James Koh** (0:06)
Omar Cooper Jr, 69 receptions, 937 yards, 13 touchdowns. He led the team in receiving yards and receptions. This was a pretty good player. Lance Zerlein compared him to Deebo Samuel. I love this guy's hands. He's tough after the catch.
I could see the comp. He's not as physical and he's not as much of a bruiser as Deebo, but man, after the catch, Omar Cooper is something else.

**Matt Harmon** (0:35)
Yeah, it feels like there's a Deebo Samuel in every class, which means that there's a Deebo Samuel in no class, you know, essentially is what I think that means. But yeah, I would say of all of the ill-fated Deebo Samuel comparisons, some of which, you know, just I never understand how the guy gets the Deebo Samuel comparison, like, you know, I remember Traylon Burks was supposed to be the next Deebo Samuel. That made no sense to me. It's like, just because a guy gets like Mickey Mouse targets doesn't mean that he is the next Deebo Samuel, especially when it comes to like breaking tackles after the catch and being that caliber of mover from a power standpoint in the open field. I will say of all the ill-fated Deebo Samuel comparisons, this one actually kind of does make some sense for me because not only is it where he wins in the open field, it's also where he wins as a route runner, how I think he's probably going to line up in the NFL.
Nobody will ever be Deebo from like the amount of, I think, rushing volume that he was able to handle as a true back. I certainly don't think Omar Cooper is of that variety either, but he is from a receiver archetype standpoint, kind of within that bucket. But yeah, just to give like the overview of my thoughts on him real quick, he is a player, Omar Cooper Jr, but when I first started watching him and there was a lot of like hype from other people about like, oh, he might be a top 20 player in this class and you know, Daniel Gerrard, Adam, I think Adam has a 19th overall prospect at one point on his top 50 prospects heading into the combine. I was like, I don't know if I mean, it's kind of kind of crazy. I don't know if I saw him in that variety. I think two things have become more clear for me since then. One is, I think that is a statement on the quality of the overall class. We've talked about this before on the show too, that there's just not like 20, certainly not 32 first-round graded overall players. Forget wide receiver, I'm talking about overall players. There's not 32 first-round graded players, even 20 first-round graded players from a variety of draft analysts that I've talked to. So you're going to end up pushing some guys up in that way. I think Cooper is a guy that has been pushed up because I've talked to this foreman, we'll break this down. He is somebody that certainly fits.
It's really easy to see how he's going to fit into your wide receiver room. The second thing that I think has become more clear is I think to the more I've watched Omar Cooper Jr, the more I have liked him a lot. I think his sample of games for Reception Perception has aged well throughout and made the final product look even better than probably the first two, three games did that I charted before the combine.

**James Koh** (3:22)
I really, really like Omar Cooper a lot. Again, he's got some late first round buzz right now. Maybe he falls into the second round, but I really like him. Man, six feet tall, 199 pounds. He ran a 4'4, 240 He has a 37 inch vertical.
I didn't think he actually played that fast, but he plays under control, which I really like.
Again, you would not know that he's sub 200 pounds. I know he's 199, but still sub 200 pounds, playing the way that he does. I wish Matt that he was more like 210, given his playing style. That'd be nice. I'm a little bit concerned. What does this look like against some of the top safeties? What does this look like against some of these linebackers that are gonna be crashing to the ball here at 199? I'm a little bit worried about that, but I will say the things I loved about Omar Cooper, man, he's got awesome hands. Oh my goodness. Contested catch wizard. I love this guy in the contested catch. And again, so, so tough after the catch. From a reception perception standpoint too, really balanced route tree, right? On five different routes, he had 10 plus percent route participation. So again, really balanced route tree. And in fact, he had a 9.3 route participation on curl. So really, you could look at six different routes where he ran for Indiana's offense here. That was really, really good variety and something that I think will bode well for him at the pro level too.