Omar Cooper Jr.

Omar Cooper Jr. — WR, NYJ (2026)

Verdict

TARGET at ADP 135.3 (FFC PPR, 2026-07-07 — WR59 of 71 with ADP, round 12 in 12-team). Cooper is a first-round rookie (R1#30, and the Jets traded up for him, sending 33 + 179 to SF — ESPN draft tracker, Apr 2026) who had already won the starting slot job by June (SI depth chart post-minicamp, June 2026), was ESPN beat writer Rich Cimini's "most impressive rookie in the spring" with a three-receiver-package spot "all but solidified" (via thejetpress, June 2026), and lands on a roster that vacated ~24% of its 2025 targets with no established WR2. Why the market is wrong: the market is stacking two discounts — bad offense (5.5-win total, Geno Smith) and Frank Reich's TE/RB target funnel — on a player whose price already absorbs both. At WR59, his *median* projected outcome (~WR38–42 by 2025 PPR baselines) beats his cost by roughly 20 positional slots, and draft capital plus a June starting job are exactly the two rookie signals the methodology says to trust (prospect-pedigree.md §1; wr.md §9). This is a deep-pool sleeper with a live, already-visible path to a role — the profile the extended universe exists to find.

Projection & comps

Bottom-up (inputs from data/team-profiles/NYJ.md, built 2026-07-07: ~62 plays/gm, ~59–60% dropback → ~37 dropbacks/gm ≈ 629 season dropbacks, ~561 pass attempts, ~33 att/gm):

• TD anchor: xTD ≈ 4.4 at median usage (88 targets × ~5% league per-target TD rate). His 13 college TDs on a 69-catch season (Wikipedia, as-of Jul 2026) is elite conversion on a Heisman-QB offense — do not carry the college TD rate forward; ceiling's 7 assumes Reich red-zone design plus positive variance.
• Positional placement (2025 PPR baselines — weekly/receiving.csv): median ≈ WR38–42 (2025 WR36 = 165.4, WR40 = 138.8); floor ≈ WR55–60 (WR55 = 114.0); ceiling ≈ WR20–24 (WR24 = 194.1).
• Games risk: low — no injury reports found in draft or offseason coverage (searched 2026-07-07); played all 16 games of Indiana's 2025 title run. (Cause of his 9-game 2023 season UNVERIFIED — likely rotational.)

Comps (rookie seasons, late-R1/similar-role capital):

• Jaxon Smith-Njigba 2023 (SEA R1#20, slot, veteran QB, crowded room): 63-628-4, ~149 PPR (PFR) — the median comp.
• Rome Odunze 2024 (CHI R1#9, crowded room, dysfunctional offense): 101 tgt, 54-734-3, 144.9 PPR (receiving.csv 2024) — volume-arrives-efficiency-doesn't median comp.
• Zay Flowers 2023 (BAL R1#22, move/slot on a run-lean team): 77-858-5, ~193 PPR (PFR) — the ceiling shape.
• Emeka Egbuka 2025 (TB R1#19, role opened early): 127 tgt, 63-938-6, 195.7 PPR (receiving.csv 2025) — the 80th-percentile outcome.
• Matthew Golden 2025 (GB R1#23): 44 tgt, 29-361-0, 70.0 PPR (receiving.csv 2025) — the cautionary sub-floor comp, and notably one of Cooper's Fantasy Life model comps. Difference: Golden never won a starting job in a deep room; Cooper already has, in a thin one.

External sanity check: no data/projections/ directory exists. FantasyPros consensus (fetched 2026-07-07) projects 46.3-550-3.3 (ECR WR59, ADP #141/WR58) — between this eval's floor and median. Disagreement noted: consensus treats him as a part-time rookie WR3 (~70 targets); this eval believes the June role reports and R1-traded-up capital and projects a full-season starting slot role. That gap *is* the thesis — and the reason confidence is medium, not high.

Usage profile (wr.md §2 table)

No NFL routes exist — sample is zero, so the table runs on pedigree priors + projected role, weighted per prospect-pedigree.md (thin-sample players are priced on priors; that is where the market misprices them).

Pedigree screen (prospect-pedigree.md §§1–4) — the actual evidence base:

• Draft capital: R1#30, traded up (33 + 179 to SF — ESPN draft tracker, Apr 2026; newyorkjets.com, Apr 2026). Round 1 = 2–3 years of guaranteed routes; breakout base rate ~2× day-2. Trading up is an extra conviction signal. Signed 4yr/$17.5M fully guaranteed, $9.1M bonus (FantasyPros news, ~Jun 2026). This is the master prior and it is emphatically passed.
• College production: 2022: 4 gm, 0 rec · 2023: 18-267-2 (9 gm) · 2024: 28-594-7 (13 gm) · 2025: 69-937-13 (16 gm), leading receiver on 16-0 national champion Indiana, 2nd-team All-Big Ten (Wikipedia, Jul 2026). 2025 dominator ≈ 29% (937/3,535 team pass yds = 26.5%; 13/41 pass TDs = 31.7% — vs Fernando Mendoza's totals as team proxy, NCAA.com/Yahoo, Apr 2026) = Good band (28–35%). Final-season target share 24%, RYPTPA 2.30 (Fantasy Life, 2026) = Good / just-below-Good bands.
• Breakout age: 21 — the Concern flag. First ≥20% dominator season came in year 4 (2025); career adjusted RYPTPA 39th percentile (Fantasy Life, 2026). "Late production emergence" is the one pedigree screen he fails. Mitigation: teammate-quality context (prospect-pedigree.md §4) — he broke out the moment the offense elevated, alongside multiple 2026 draftees, and the NFL priced the film at R1 anyway.
• Athletic testing: RAS 9.15 (356th of 4,196 WRs since 1987 — ras.football, fetched 2026-07-07); 4.42 forty (9.17 grade), 37" vertical, 6'0"/199. GREAT speed / okay size; agilities not run (DNQ explosion composite). Clears every WR testing bar that matters.
• Declare status: early declare after the 2025 title (Wikipedia, Jul 2026) ✓. Age 22 (DOB 2003-12-14 — Sleeper JSON, 2026-07-07), so his year-2/3 breakout window (wr.md §9) lands at ages 23–24.

Archetype (wr.md §8): slot volume with YAC/physicality overlay — "rugged physicality, YAC production (+2.7 and +2.1 YAC over expected his final two college seasons), press ability" vs "routes lack polish, average in-and-out quickness at breaks" (Fantasy Life Rookie Super Model, 2026). Fantasy Life comps: Ladd McConkey / Matthew Golden / Terrace Marshall Jr. — a comp trio that spans this eval's entire range, which is the honest way to read a 79.4 Super Model score. Stable PPR-floor archetype; needs the red-zone role for ceiling. Best slightly under market — which is where his ADP sits.

Context (from data/team-profiles/NYJ.md, built 2026-07-07)

• Play-caller — the double-edged thesis: Frank Reich (hired 2026-02-04) calls plays. Bad news: his career signature is funneling targets to TEs/RBs at WRs' expense — WRs got just 54.8% of targets across his tenures, and only 3 WRs ever hit 15+ PPR PPG under him, all needing 8.6+ targets/gm (CBS Sports, 2026). Good news: the profile explicitly notes the two first-round pass-catchers (Sadiq, Cooper) "fit his TE/slot-friendly shape" — a West Coast rhythm offense schemes volume to the slot, and Cooper's YAC profile is Reich's designed-touch type.
• Role: starting slot after mandatory minicamp (SI depth chart, June 2026; Sleeper depth chart SWR, 2026-07-07), with demonstrated outside reps in the spring easing the slot-only worry (thejetpress citing Cimini, June 2026). Camp alignment reports are the earliest hard evidence for rookies (wr.md §4) and they all point one way.
• Target vacuum: ~115 of 472 targets (24%) vacated (Metchie 44, Reynolds 21, T. Johnson 18, Lazard 18, others). No established WR2: Adonai Mitchell is the boundary/deep incumbent but was a 41% catch-rate (24/58 — receiving.csv 2025), worst-fit profile for a West Coast tree per the team profile; Tim Patrick is 1-yr vet depth. The realistic WR target ladder after Wilson runs straight through Cooper.
• Target competition — the cap: Garrett Wilson (~$130M, clear No. 1, healthy — newyorkjets.com, 2026-05-29) plus Reich's TE funnel (Sadiq R1#16 + Mason Taylor, TE share ≥20% in 8 of Reich's 10 seasons) plus Breece Hall (RB share ≥19.2% in 6 of 10) leaves ~16–18% as the ceiling on a rookie WR2's share in this exact offense. The MOF traffic is real: Sadiq eats the same middle-of-field targets Cooper does.
• QB: Geno Smith, 36, 17 INTs in 2025 (ESPN, 2026-03-10). A rhythm passer suits a slot separator, but the tier is low, and the contingency line (Zappe/Klubnik) drops every pass-catcher's floor a tier. Benching risk "low early, live if the season craters" on a 5.5-win team.
• O-line / environment: elite continuity (4/5 returning), ascending R1 tackles, weak interior (Myers 52.9 PFF). Interior pressure compresses offenses to the quick game — which *helps* slot/underneath profiles per wr.md §7 and the team profile's own read ("temper deep-aDOT projections more than the underneath game — Cooper/Sadiq/Hall"). Vegas 5.5 wins → negative script → pass-volume padding in garbage time, where the trust-chain slot role lives.

Tripwires (re-run this eval if any fire)

• Camp/preseason role slippage — Cooper rotating behind Tim Patrick or Isaiah Williams in the slot, or Mitchell taking inside reps with the 1s (camp opens ~7/28; team-profile watch item #3 flags rookie WR roles as camp-fragile).
• Geno Smith benched or injured / real Klubnik-starting buzz — every NYJ pass-catcher's floor drops a tier per the team-profile contingency line.
• Preseason personnel shows heavy 12 with Cooper off the field — if two-TE usage runs past ~30% and Cooper isn't one of the two WRs staying on, the ~70% RP assumption is void.
• Garrett Wilson trade or long-term injury — ceiling re-rates sharply upward; re-run toward a stronger verdict.
• ADP rises inside ~pick 105 / WR48 — the ~20-slot median-vs-price edge is gone; verdict flips toward HOLD.