LA Chargers: Why David Njoku was a better option than Jared Cook

3. Jared Cook is trending the wrong way for the LA Chargers

I am willing to eat crow on this one after this season and if you are a fan of Jared Cook then feel free to bookmark this and throw it in my face once the season is over. I don’t think Cook is going to be good, at all, for the Chargers next season.

Sure, he may have a good game or two, but the overall production that the LA Chargers get from Cook is likely going to be far less than fans are expecting. I see a lot of fans on social media citing his stats from the last three seasons, and that’s fine.

What people are overlooking is the fact that those numbers have done down every single season. Not only are they going down year-by-year, but Cook’s production and targets went down as last season went along. The Saints were okay with letting him go for a fourth-round pick in Adam Trautman.

How often do we see 34-year-old ends just flip the script and suddenly get better after regressing three years in a row? Every season we see some veteran regress because of their age yet we pretend like it won’t happen to Cook.

Remember Casey Hayward? Nobody expected him to be that bad last season. However, I did warn about a Hayward regression before the year… and what happened?

I just don’t think Cook is going to be very good. He can’t block and he is a vertical threat that is slower and gets less separation than he did even two seasons ago. By the end of the season, I would be surprised if Cook is still playing the most snaps in LA.

He is fine to build depth, but touting him as a Hunter Henry replacement is a big stretch for me. David Njoku could have legitimately been that.