That's the only thing I'd say piques my interest. The talent is there. Some just get it and some don't. With that said, I think he'll get it. The Saints, while different, run a complex offense as well. I've always viewed them as more of a vertical team, though. We'll see.
As far as the option, that's getting picked up for sure... unless they've already been talking a new deal.
This isn't addressed toward you, but some people need to stop worrying about a 23 year old superstar picking up this offense. He is a very very smart WR. Cooks is a film junkie
From "Big Promise of Brandin Cooks"
"The middle of Oregon is a long way from Westwood. Before his senior year of high school began, Cooks committed to UCLA, where his good friend Phil Ruhl was already playing.
When Cooks started watching Bruins games that fall, he quickly realized there might be a problem. At the time, UCLA was running most of its plays out of the pistol formation, and its receivers spent the majority of the plays as wide-aligning offensive linemen.
That same season, Oregon State played two of its first three games on national TV against top-10 teams.
As he watched, Cooks noticed a 5-foot-7 Beaver named James Rodgers tearing up the field. Oregon State played a sophisticated offense with a sophisticated route tree, but also one that favored the fly sweep — a handoff to an in-motion wide receiver — that was a college football craze at the time. “What I liked about the pro-style offense, you’re running routes,” Cooks says. “Me, not being very big, what was going to separate me from other receivers is route-running ability.”
During a September bye week, Locey was passing through Stockton on a recruiting swing when he decided to stop by Lincoln to see Brian Gray. During the visit, Gray mentioned that Cooks had been rethinking his choice and that Locey should reach out. He did, and Cooks admitted that Oregon State had caught his eye. “
He actually paid attention as a 17-year-old to his fit as a football player,” Riley says. “Most kids at that age are kind of enamored with the surface stuff with recruiting. He based his decision on things of substance. He knew why he was doing it.”
Brent Brennan was only a couple of months into the job as Oregon State’s wide receivers coach when he got his first text message from Brandin Cooks:
What do I have to do to come in and start? “It was one of those cliché answers,” Cooks says. “‘Work hard, learn the playbook.’ But I really wanted to know!”
Cooks spent most weekends during his final high school semester shuttling back and forth to Corvallis. He’d sleep on Rodgers’s couch, in part to save money, but also because Rodgers had the playbook. Cooks attended morning meetings, to the bemusement of older players who couldn’t understand why someone who didn’t have to be there would be. The week of Oregon State’s spring game, which happened to fall during spring break, Cooks was constantly tangled up in Brennan’s feet.
“He wanted to know how we call our formations, how we call plays, what part of the play spoke specifically to him,” Brennan says. “He’s like, ‘Well, when you say this, what part of the play is that?’ He was just hanging out watching practice. But he was just really, really focused.”
A coach’s days during fall camp are long. By the time Brennan got to the one-on-one segments of practice, it was well past midnight. The mind plays tricks that late. Somehow, Brennan thought he saw Cooks pitted against Jordan Poyer and Rashaad Reynolds, the team’s two best cornerbacks, whenever his turn came. It didn’t make sense. The next day, he saw why. “He was letting people cut in front of him, so that he can go against the best guy on our team,” Brennan says
. “Normally, true freshmen don’t choose the toughest matchup on the field. He chose it every time. When I realized it, I was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’”
Hopefully after you read that article above, this will settle down any concerns about whether or not he has the intelligence, work ethic, and heart to learn our offense
