Omar Cooper Fantasy Football Impact With New York Jets

The Jets just landed one of the biggest risers of the entire 2026 NFL Draft cycle. Omar Cooper went from a fringe Round 2 name over the winter to landing in the first round at No. 30.

The reason is simple: he's an elite yards-after-catch weapon who happened to help Indiana bring home a national championship.

The Jets brought in Geno Smith to take snaps under center this season. I can’t say this is my favorite landing spot for Cooper, as the Bills were slated to pick right behind them.

After the Jets snagged Cooper, the Bills traded away No. 31 to Tennessee. Sounds like Cooper was their guy! It was an absolutely chaotic first round.

Omar Cooper Fantasy Football Outlook With The New York Jets

The 2025 season tape tells the story. In his final year at Indiana, Cooper caught 69 passes for 937 yards and 13 touchdowns while helping the Hoosiers go on a College Football Playoff run.

The 13 receiving TDs tied him for third in all of college football. He also chipped in a 75-yard rushing score against Kennesaw State, finishing with 5 career carries for 97 yards and 2 rushing TDs. Point being: Indiana found a bunch of creative ways to get him the football.

The context is where it gets interesting. In his Rookie Super Model profile, Dwain McFarland flags that Cooper didn't reach a full-time role until his fourth season on campus.

When he did, he played 83% of his snaps from the slot. That was a major jump from his 2023 and 2024 usage, where he spent 83% and 90% of his time on the outside as Indiana's field stretcher.

In his Fantasy Life scouting report, Ian Hartitz adds the tactical layer: Cooper saw 40 RPO targets in 2025 (most of any Power 4 pass catcher), and his screen workload jumped from zero in 2023-24 to 26 in his final year.

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Should You Plan to Draft Omar Cooper this year?

Pre-draft rankings tell a split story. Dwain had Cooper as the WR5 in his Rookie Super Model at a 79 overall rating, and wrote that the model would view anything earlier than Day 2 as a reach.

Meanwhile, Matthew Freedman mocked him at No. 16 to the Jets last weekend (almost nailed it), and Ian noted Cooper had become most people's No. 5 WR in the class by April.

I’m trying to have my glass half full here.

Smith is a better QB for fantasy purposes compared to Justin Fields or Tyrod Taylor. But the main angle for the Jets’ passing game is the negative game scripts they’ll be dealing with most weeks.

Adonai Mitchell flashed a bit last year, and Garrett Wilson should be healthy entering 2026 after playing just seven games last season. Oh, yeah, the Jets also took Kenyon Sadiq on Thursday. Let’s not forget Breece Hall is a good pass catcher out of the backfield as well. The pass-happy scripts should help, but there is quietly some target competition when everyone is healthy.

I’m very interested in Coope for dynasty drafts, but for redraft, league structure and size both matter. I’d expect him to be left on the waiver wire in 10-team leagues with shallow benches, but I like the idea of stashing him in 12-plus team leagues.

Wilson will be the alpha WR1 next season, with Cooper battling it out for the No. 2 pass-catcher role with Sadiq and Mitchell. Hopefully the Jets can find an above-average quarterback in next year’s draft. Whoever steps in behind center in 2027 will certainly have some young weapons to work with.

2026 Scouting Report For Omar Cooper

The athletic profile is the easy part. Cooper measured 6-foot, 199 pounds, ran a 4.42-second 40 at the NFL Scouting Combine and posted a 37-inch vertical.

Where Cooper genuinely separates is with the football in his hands. Ian called Cooper lethal after the catch and flagged his 0.39 missed tackles per reception in 2025—the seventh-best mark among 309 Power Four receivers with 50-plus catches in a season since 2021.

Now the concerns, and they're real. Dwain called Cooper's late-arriving production his biggest red flag, noting Cooper didn't post a meaningful RYPTPA until his fourth season on campus—a trait that historically correlates negatively with Year 1-3 NFL fantasy output.

Ian added the competition-level concern: Cooper's YAC dominance evaporated against the top eight defenses on Indiana's schedule.

He went from 0.34 missed tackles per reception in non-marquee games to 0.25 against Ohio State, Penn State, Iowa, Notre Dame, Oregon, Alabama, Miami and Michigan. His yards-after-catch per reception also dropped from 7.2 to 5.2 in those games. That's a gap worth noting.

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