The Houston Texans traded receiver DeAndre Hopkins to the Arizona Cardinals for running back David Johnson, a second-round pick in the 2020 NFL Draft, and a 2021 fourth-rounder. After signing Randall Cobb and trading with the Los Angeles Rams for Brandin Cooks, the Texans have remade their receiving corps.
However, Cooks runs much of the same routes as wideout Will Fuller, according to Pro Football Focus. The football analytics firm took a look at the routes Fuller and Cooks ran in 2019 and observed similarities.
While Hopkins has been the brilliant piece of the passing game puzzle for the Texans, it’s well-chronicled how much worse the group is without its second wide receiver, Will Fuller V.
Interestingly, if you look at their route heat maps, Fuller and Cooks run a lot of the same routes.
Given Fuller’s injury history — he’s missed 22 games during his four-year career — and his redundancy with the newly acquired Cooks, it remains to be seen if this will be the last move that the Texans make at the position. The Texans, after all, still have Kenny Stills and the former Dallas Cowboy and Green Bay Packer Randall Cobb in the mix.
The Texans wouldn’t exactly be wise to rid themselves of Fuller, even if he has some of the same routes as Cooks. The commonality that all four aforementioned receivers have is they each missed time in 2019. While Cooks only missed two games, and they were the only two games he missed in his career, they were due to concussion issues, and it remains to be seen if he can overcome that injury.
Houston will find a place for all of their receivers, even if their skill sets may seem redundant. The trimming down to a 53-man roster over the course of training camp and the preseason and accompanying injuries always has a way of setting the depth chart.
