After his 2018 season, Austin Hooper was ready for a big 2019, and he delivered for Atlanta and those that drafted him in fantasy. In 2019, he caught 75 of his 97 targets for 787 yards and six touchdowns. He parlayed that year into a big deal in Cleveland to solidify the tight end position for the Cleveland Browns. Unlike 2019, he didn’t quite live up to expectations. Hooper caught 46 of 70 targets (13 games) for 435 yards and four touchdowns. He caught just 65.7 percent of his passes, which was a career low and his 6.2 yards per target was far below the 8.1 yards per target mark he put up during his four years with the Falcons.

The opportunities were there for Hooper, as Baker Mayfield targeted the tight end position 30 percent of the time last year, per Sharp Football Stats, which was tied for the second-highest rate in the league. However, Cleveland had the fourth-lowest pass rate in 2021, so while the target share was there, the pure volume wasn’t, as Cleveland was content to let Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt beat down the opposing defenses, and then take their shots from there.

Over the final three weeks of the season, Hooper had a massive 25 percent target share, and if you go back to Week 12, he saw 18 percent of the targets in the final six weeks of the season. Over the final three weeks of the year he was the TE4 in PPR, and over the final six weeks of the 2020 season, he was the TE7.

Hooper had just one game with more than 60 receiving yards, and perhaps missing games when he did didn’t allow him to fully get into a rhythm. In Weeks 4-6, he had at least five grabs and six receptions in each game, so things were picking up, but then he missed two weeks, and in the following four weeks, he had just 11 targets, despite playing a normal allotment of snaps. Kevin Stefanski’s offensive system gives tight ends a reasonable floor, but without a healthy number of touchdowns, the upside is limited.

Under Stefanski’s tutelage, in 2019, Kyle Rudolph had six touchdowns, but just 39 grabs for 367 yards. Irv Smith Jr. found the end zone twice on under 60 percent of the snaps but had 36 grabs for 311 yards. The two combined for 75 grabs, 678 yards and eight touchdowns. In 2020, Hooper had four red zone touchdowns and totaled 435 yards.

With Stefanski wanting to pound the rock, Hooper was asked to block a lot last year, and we all know you don’t get fantasy points from blocking. The pricy free agent acquisition ran a route on 81.9 percent of his snaps last year, per Pro Football Focus (PFF), which tied a career low for Hooper. Also, Cleveland didn’t put him in the slot as much as Atlanta did. From 2017-2019, he took at least 35 percent of his snaps in the slot, with a whopping 42.9 percent mark back in 2019, per PFF. Well, in 2020, it was just 24.3 percent, which could have been expected with Jarvis Landry being one of the league’s best receivers out of the slot.

It went deeper than just where Hooper lined up. He’s never been a major downfield threat, but his adjusted yards per attempt with Mayfield (6.72) was a full yard lower than his mark with Matt Ryan (7.9) from 2018-2019, per RotoViz. Take a look at his percentage of targets broken down by distance.

 20+ Yards10-19 Yards0-9 YardsBehind L.O.S.
20188.1%15.1%70.9%5.8%
20194.3%30.1%57.0%8.6%
20204.6%32.3%50.8%12.3%

Courtesy of PFF

Hooper will need red zone targets and will need to produce with them to reward fantasy owners in 2021. All four of his touchdowns came inside the 10-yard line last year, and he was second on the team in red zone targets last year. Over one-third of Baker Mayfield’s touchdown passes went to tight ends last year, but that could change a bit, especially with the return of Odell Beckham Jr. to the wide receiver room.

Stefanski’s system benefits tight ends in the red zone, but I would argue the overall upside is capped, because the focus is on running the ball, and the tight ends primarily hang out within ten yards of the line of scrimmage. If Hooper doesn’t score touchdowns his overall fantasy performances will be middling. The team will have Beckham back on the field, along with Landry, amidst a multitude of other weapons, and the expected passing volume figures to be in the bottom third of the league again. Additionally, Cleveland has a very athletic tight end room, with David Njoku and Harrison Bryant, and the two of them each average more yards after catch per reception and a higher aDOT, per PFF.

If it was just Hooper and two bums at tight end for Cleveland, there would be enough volume, but Njoku and Bryant are deserving of snaps in their own right. Fortunately, Cleveland runs 12 personnel a ton, and no team had more plays with three tight ends on the field than Cleveland, per Sharp Football Stats. The other two will eat into Hooper’s workload just enough, but the good thing is that Hooper is being drafted so late that you can take a flier on him as your TE2 or maybe even TE3 in best ball formats, and he’s a low-ceiling option you can use during your starter’s bye week.

After a “down” year in 2020, I’m sure Cleveland can find about 42 million reasons why they should get him the football more often. The other hard part is why take a tight end in a low volume passing attack, when going right around Hooper is Blake Jarwin (TE22) and Jared Cook (TE24)? There are other weapons on those teams, absolutely, but those teams stand to throw the ball far more than Cleveland will.

Regardless, at the end of the day, if he’s not scoring touchdowns, it could be another year outside the top 18-20 tight ends for Hooper. Drafting Hooper, even as your TE2, indicates that year two in Stefanski’s system and Mayfield’s development in said system takes a nice step forward.


Statistical Credits:
profootballfocus.com
rotoviz.com
sharpfootballstats.com