And that statline, until proven otherwise, is still his greatest season he’s ever had. Every player is going to get more stats if they’re thrown the ball more. That doesn’t make a player a #1 based off of the increase in involvement/stats. CeeDee is a better player than he was his rookie year, or he was in the season where was doing whatever he was doing. Amari also isn’t a true #1, so that created another issue for Dallas at the time.
1300+ is a strong season. No one is saying it’s not. But that’s a 1200+ season in a 16 game schedule. That’s Brandon Lloyd, that’s Donald Driver, that’s Donte Stallworth, that’s Adam Thielen. None of those guys are true #1 WRs either. When their team needed them to be, they put up stats, yes, but they didn’t show up consistently in the games they needed to. They weren’t beating defenses designed to shut them down.
CeeDee is a very good player. CeeDee will get top 5 money. But CeeDee is not being used the best he could be. That would be with a Davante Adams or a Deandre Hopkins on the other side. Asking him to carry the passing game allows games like today, as it did for Brandon Lloyd, but it also leads to all the games where you wondered why Dallas settled on Cook instead of trying to get a #1 WR in the offseason.