To be fair, Saints WR Brandin Cooks often was shadowed by two of the NFL's top young cornerbacks -- the Atlanta Falcons’ Desmond Trufant and the San Diego Chargers’ Jason Verrett -- in those two quiet games before breaking out last week. Cooks also received extra attention from deep safeties.
But because of Cooks’ blazing speed (a 4.33-second 40-yard dash at the NFL scouting combine), there is probably a temptation for the Saints to use the 5-foot-10, 189-pounder on deep routes most of the time, even if he is just clearing out No. 1 cornerbacks and safeties.
Cooks, a first-round draft pick in 2014, repeated Monday what he has stressed many times -- that he doesn’t want to get pigeonholed as “a guy that’s just considered a deep-ball threat and that’s it.”
Cooks said Monday that he really liked the Saints’ game plan in Sunday’s 41-38 victory over the Carolina Panthers, in which he caught seven passes for a career-high 173 yards and an 87-yard touchdown. In those two prior games, he had just five catches for 44 yards.
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