Bill O’Brien Proves He’s the Fantasy Football GM Who Everyone Mocks — Brandin Cooks Deal Looks Like Another Band-Aid

Bill O’Brien is that one GM that every fantasy football league has. You know the type. The one who is always making trades while never coming close to winning the league.

Trader Bill is at it again, picking up wide receiver Brandin Cooks — whose last decent season came in 2018, the same as David Johnson, the running back O’Brien traded DeAndre Hopkins for — in exchange for a second round pick in this year’s draft. The Houston Texans also get a fourth round pick in the deal with the Los Angeles Rams.

But O’Brien will probably have traded that pick by next Tuesday.

Say this for the Texans GM/coach/overlord. He’s certainly not sitting still during the coronavirus pandemic. He is continually churning over the Texans’ roster, apparently searching for players he does not feel he has to give life lectures to.

The 26-year-old Cooks can stretch the field when he healthy (he suffered through multiple concussions last season). Returning Texans wideout Will Fuller can also stretch the field when healthy. What neither speedster has ever shown is the ability to come close to replicating the every game production of the best receiver in the NFL.

That would be Hopkins, the new Arizona Cardinal.

O’Brien is giving the franchise quarterback his entire Texans’ tenure depends on more options. And Deshaun Watson can certainly throw a better ball to Cooks than embattled Rams quarterback Jared Goff did. But handing Watson a receiving corps of Fuller, Cooks, Kenny Stills and free agent pickup Randall Cobb and telling him that it will be just as good as life with Hopkins is a fanciful proposition.

Giving up the 57th pick in the draft for Cooks isn’t that out there. Sure the Texans could have possibly drafted a young receiver who might eventually grow into a better player than Cooks at that spot. But that’s a long shot — and rookie wide receivers can require long adjustment periods.

O’Brien is not a coach or GM with a ton of time. He’s in win-now mode.

Still, as O’Brien himself likes to rationalize, no trade is made in a vacuum. Because of that this one looks like just another attempt to desperately try and replace the irreplaceable force that O’Brien already inexplicably gave away.