On the day the NFL draft's circus visits Johnny Manziel in College Station, Brandin Cooks half-watches the big top from the couch of his sparsely decorated apartment in Oregon. On this rainy afternoon, just as Cooks clicks to ESPN, his name appears onscreen in a list of Mel Kiper's top five receivers available in this year's draft.
"I don't pay attention to it much," Cooks says. "But it's cool to have [happen], because I would be hot if they wasn't talking about me!"
Cooks is third on Kiper's board, behind likely top-10 picks Sammy Watkins and Mike Evans. It's a quantum leap from where he was just four months ago. Few players have aced the barrage of pre-draft tests like Cooks has. As a junior at Oregon State, he smashed both school and Pac-12 records for receptions and yards in a season. But when Cooks declared for the draft, the NFL's advisory board slapped him with a second-round grade. All he's done since is run the fastest 40 among receivers at the combine. Now, he may be gone in the top half of the first round. It's still not enough for Cooks.
"Wherever I go," Cooks says, "I know I'm going to do it better than those guys considered top-five, top-10 picks." This is how Cooks talks. At 20, he's young, but he never seems brash. He isn't trying to convince anyone of anything. He already knows.
Just ask Brian Gray. Six weeks before the combine, Cooks was back in his hometown of Stockton, California, having lunch with Gray, his former coach at Lincoln High School. They were talking about the 40-yard dash, and what Cooks expected to run: "He said, 'Coach, I'm going to force some people to make some tough decisions when I pull off this 4.3.'" It's the same tone Cooks used when he told Gray he was ready to play varsity football as a 14-year-old sophomore.
"His confidence is very direct," Gray says. "He wasn't going to tell you how good he was going to be; he was going to show you. But if you asked him, 'Do you think you can do it?,' he would tell you yes. And he would look you right in the eye."
Cooks didn't waver as he got older. When asked about his college plans before he'd received a single offer, Cooks told everyone he'd end up at a Pac-10 school. He did. Before he even got to campus, he told people he planned to leave Oregon State after his junior year. He did that, too. "He's so focused on where he wants to go," OSU receivers coach Brent Brennan says. "He's not leaving anything to chance." No one could blame him.
red80
b/c I know you've been extra intrigued by him 
