Fantasy Football: 5 Things We Learned From Week 12

A Change of Scenery Can Be All It Takes

Amari Cooper was on fire this Thanksgiving. He absolutely scorched the Washington defense for a league-best Week 12 performance. He reeled in 8 of 9 targets for 180 yards and 2 scores and looked just about unstoppable while he was doing it.

His Week 12 performance was certainly easily his best of the year, but things had already been trending up for the somehow-still-only-24-years-old wide receiver. Since the Oakland Raiders traded him, he's been performing quite well. His counting stats didn't jump off the page coming into Week 12, but he's been handling a solid 24% of the team's targets and 33% of their total air yards since arriving in Big D.

Cooper's target share and share of the air yards showed that even though he was in a low-volume passing attack, he was the focal point of it. Based solely on his opportunity, that put him in the conversation as must-start player in fantasy. But this past week, we saw what his upside looked like with his new team -- and it is looking good.

With his long, tackle-breaking 69-yard touchdown run, Cooper now joins the top five wide receivers in the league in expected yards after the catch above expectation, per the NFL's Next Gen Stats. He's adding 2.5 extra yards above what we should expect him to add every time he catches the ball. He's playing efficient football, and now that he's in Dallas, he's getting much more consistent volume.

Cooper is finally able to show us that he's exactly what he looked like coming out of Alabama: an elite, top-dog wide receiver. It turns out all he really needed was a change in scenery.