COOKS HELPS OFFENSE SING
Cowboys wide receiver leads on, off field
DALLAS — Cowboys wide receiver Brandin Cooks has been everything the team hoped for when they acquired him last offseason from Houston for a couple of late-round picks.
Cooks has caught 54 passes for 657 yards and 8 touchdowns and has been a perfect complement to CeeDee Lamb.
“I just show up, do my job and be the best I can be for my team when my number’s called and go out there and make a play,” Cooks said.
The Cowboys are 7-1 when he catches a touchdown pass, but it’s his big play ability that had the Cowboys seeking to bring him aboard. Dallas is unbeaten when he catches a pass of at least 20 yards this season.
“On the field, (he) is super competitive,” Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy said. “I think he has a clear understanding of everything that is going on – how he fits to the quarterback and the pass part of it. He has a clear understanding, schematically, of his role in the run game. Just a very, very smart football player.”
Cooks, who has 550 snaps out wide and another 259 snaps in the slot, has hauled in 17 passes of 15 yards or more, including touchdown grabs of 25 yards against the Rams and 31 yards against the Commanders.
“His knack for big plays in big moments has been awesome for us,” McCarthy said.
But it has also been his work off the field, during the week and on gameday, that has the Cowboys coaches impressed with Cooks.
Cooks is one of the emotional leaders on the team. He makes his way up and down the Cowboys bench area during the game, keeping everybody – young and old – involved.
“What I love about the guy is how he communicates and works the sidelines,” Cowboys offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer said. “If we are doing great, he is still over the talking to Dak … just constant communication. He is encouraging, confident. … Again, we have a lot of young pieces, and we play a lot of young pieces. Outside of all the things he does on the field when he is out there playing, running and all that stuff, the one thing that does not go unnoticed, because we kind of expect that because he has done that at a high level, but the guy is invaluable when you talk about just helping us set the tone. Helping us send the message during the week and on gameday.”
Cooks helped send the message to opponents several times this season, just ask the Giants – 16-yard catch in the season opener and then a 37-, 34- and 32-yard grabs in the second meeting, as well as the Rams (25 yards, 19 yards), the Panthers (22, 20), the Commanders (31, 25 and 15 in the second matchup), the Seahawks (19, 16), the Eagles (30) and two 21-yard grabs against the Lions.
Now, the Cowboys hope the veteran produces big plays in the postseason, which he has done in his career already.
In two playoff runs – six games and two Super Bowl appearances, Cooks has 29 catches on 46 targets for 447 yards.
With the Patriots in 2017, he was responsible for four explosive plays, including a 23-yard catch in a Super Bowl LII loss to Philadelphia.
Cooks followed that up with another playoff run in 2018 with the Rams, where he was responsible for 10 explosive plays – three (15, 20, 21) against Dallas in the divisional round, two (25, 36) against New Orleans in the conference championship and five (15, 16, 19, 21, 24) more in a Super Bowl LIII loss to the Patriots.
“Obviously I have been there a couple of times, pretty far, but at the end of the day it’s our team,” Cooks said. “I think we have guys with the right mindset … and at the end of the day we just have to go play our ball.”
He did that opposite wide receivers Chris Hogan in New England and Robert Woods and Josh Reynolds in Los Angeles, but with the Cowboys he is playing alongside CeeDee Lamb, which should open plenty of opportunities for Cooks to produce in this postseason run.
And that is exactly why the Cowboys acquired him before the start of the 2023 season.
“There is a sense of urgency because there is no tomorrow,” Cooks said. “It’s win or go home every single week.”