“Trust the process.”
Brandin Cooks said it over and over, repeating the mantra five times in under three minutes when talking to reporters at his locker at The Star on Thursday.
The questions being thrown at him were largely about why his quarterback hasn’t been throwing to him, especially after the Cowboys went out in the offseason and pulled a somewhat uncharacteristic trade for the veteran who’s now in his tenth year in the league.
The 30-year-old is off to a slow start wearing the blue and silver, and slow is something that Cooks just hasn’t made a habit of.
The Cowboys are his fifth team. He was drafted in the first round in 2014, and then traded for by four other clubs, who ostensibly all knew what a deep threat they were getting. Coming out of the gates with each new team, Cooks came out hot.
Until he got to Dallas. Here are the numbers Cooks has turned in over his first six games at each stop in his career:
| Year/Team | Recs | Tgts | Yds | TDs |
| 2014 Saints | 34 | 44 | 278 | 1 |
| 2017 Patriots | 24 | 41 | 472 | 2 |
| 2018 Rams | 28 | 39 | 505 | 1 |
| 2020 Texans | 27 | 42 | 367 | 2 |
| 2023 Cowboys | 13 | 23 | 109 | 1 |
The dropoff this year is jarring.
And those are just his first six outings with each new team, when the offense is still playing with its shiny new toy. But across his NFL tenure, Cooks has never had any season start as slow as 2023.
Cooks may be content to trust the process, but the process has always deployed him as a key part of the passing game right from the jump, no matter the team, the quarterback, or the supporting cast around him.
As a Cowboy, Cooks has his fewest targets, receptions, and yards- by a lot- over any opening-six-game stretch with a new club.
I'm not going to lie, I haven't watched every snap of the Dallas offense back on tape.
Can someone tell me … are there any deep overs for Brandin Cooks in this offense? Does he ever run posts?
Surely they didn't trade for The Fast Guy so he could run curls all day.
— David Helman (@davidhelman_) October 17, 2023
To his credit, though, Cooks says he hasn’t complained about a lack of involvement, saying he’s happy to be winning games and contributing to an offense that has an impressive array of weaponry.
So no throw me the damn ball moments, even in the huddle or behind closed doors with the Dallas coaching staff?
“Zero,” Cooks said flatly. “Because I trust Coach, and I trust the process. I’m not here to let Coach know ‘get me involved’ and whatnot. That’s not my job. My job is to show up, take the game plan, and do it to the best of my ability, and do my job.”
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So for now, at 4-2, with a high-potential offense that’s still figuring out how all the bells and whistles work, Cooks is fine with talking CeeDee Lamb off his Week 5 ledge over a lack of targets and sideline-mentoring Michael Gallup through his Week 6 case of the dropsies, all by using the mantra that he keeps coming back to himself as he waits for his own breakout game as a Cowboy.
“I’ve been around long enough,” Cooks explained. “If you go to the quarterback [or] you go to the coach, now he has another thought on his mind, like, ‘Well, shoot, now I’ve got to get him involved because he may be frustrated.’ That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to win games, and so… trust the process.”
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