By: Brandon Carr
Yesterday was the beginning of NFL players holding out until they receive a new contract. The first player to holdout was Pro Bowl running back for the Minnesota Vikings, Dalvin Cook. A source told ESPN that Cook “will no longer participate in any team-related activities until and unless he receives what he determines to be a reasonable deal.” This source also told ESPN that Cook is….“out. Without a reasonable extension, he will not be showing up for camp or beyond.”
Cook is coming off of a career year with the Vikings where Cook in 14 games, ran for 1,135 yards and 13 touchdowns. Cook also caught 53 passes for 519 yards. Cook’s efforts resulted in him being named to his first Pro Bowl of his career.
In this article specifically, I am going to be talking about the situation the Vikings are in and why they are better off not paying Cook the money he wants. Let’s break it down….
To start things off I wanted to make things very clear from the getgo. I don’t believe Cook is in any way shape or form, not a good football player. Cook I believe is one of the best running backs in the NFL and whenever you watch him play on Sundays, you can clearly see the talent that Cook possesses. He’s a phenomenal runner who is great when he can get in the open field as he is great at making people miss, he is a very explosive runner who can break off a huge run at any point and time, and he’s a great weapon in the screen game. All of this sounds great but there are some factors with Cook that many people like myself are going to point to that could cause the Vikings to not pay him.
Injury History
Cook is one of the most injury-prone running backs in the NFL. Cook has never played a full season in his career and over the past 3 seasons, he has only played in 58% of the Vikings games. Cook has suffered the following injuries in his 3 years in the NFL, a torn ACL in his rookie season which caused him to only play in 4 games, a hamstring strain where he missed 5 games in his sophomore season, and last year he suffered a left shoulder sprain that caused him to miss the last two games of the regular season. Even in his collegiate career, Cook suffered two shoulder labrum tears on the same shoulder during two separate spring practices. Since Cook didn’t miss anytime during the college football season with these tears, people may forget that these injuries did happen to Cook in college.
According to Sports Injury Predictor, Cook has a 56.8% chance to suffer an injury in the 2020 season which are very high odds. This has always been a concern with Cook which has caused people to fade Cook in fantasy football drafts and has been considered to be a high-risk player to draft.
Quality Backups
The Vikings are in a situation where I believe that if they do happen to not give Cook an extension, they have two very quality backups that are capable of taking lead back duties. Enter Alexander Mattison and Mike Boone. Let’s first talk about Mattison…
Alexander Mattison, I believe out of the two would likely be the guy moving forward if Cook misses time. Mattison was drafted in the 3rd round by the Vikings last season. Mattison’s rookie season saw him run the ball 100 times for 462 rushing yards with only 1 touchdown.
Mattison when he was in college, was a workhorse running back for Boise State. Mattison’s last college season saw him carry the ball 302 times for 1,415 yards with 17 total touchdowns. This to me is a huge indicator that Mattison can handle a bell-cow workload in the NFL. Mattison isn’t going to kill you with speed as he only ran a 4.67 40 at the combine but he’s a strong runner that is going to wear defenses down with his 5’11 221 pound frame.
Mattison has shown the ability to make big plays already in the NFL. The reason why he is able to make big plays is that Mattison does a great job of making people miss by breaking tackles. Mattison even breaks tackles at a higher rate than Cook does as according to Pro Football Reference, Mattison broke one tackle for every 9.1 rushing attempts and Cook broke a tackle for every 12.5 rushing attempts. Mattison also broke 11 tackles compared to Cook’s 20 but that is with Cook carrying the ball 150 more times than Mattison. Mattison, also according to PlayerProfiler, had a higher breakaway run rate than Cook. 8.0% of Mattison’s carries went for 15 or more yards while 4.4% of Cook’s carries went for 15 or more yards.
We haven’t seen Mattison with the opportunity to start an entire game in the NFL but from what we have seen in college and what he has done with his small sample size in the NFL, he is more than capable of doing so.
Mattison did suffer an ankle sprain that caused him to miss the final two games of the regular season and this is when we saw what Mike Boone is capable of.
Boone is a guy that I believe is worth the hype that he has gotten from people. Boone was an undrafted free agent signing for the Vikings in 2018 and he has been known for being a monster preseason performer. Boone last preseason was second in the league in rushing yards with 196 yards and first in the league in yards per attempt with 4.8 YPC. I don’t put a lot of stock in what you do in the preseason, but you could tell from watching him that Boone possesses elite burst. Boone’s burst score according to PlayerProfiler was 140.9 which is in the 100th percentile. Boone when he got his opportunity to play more than 30% of the snaps, made the most of his opportunities. Boone in 3 games, carried the ball 41 times for 232 yards and 3 touchdowns. This was highlighted by his week 17 performance against the Chicago Bears where Boone carried the ball 17 times for 148 yards and a touchdown. He isn’t as talented as Mattison but he has shown flashes when he has had his opportunity which makes him a very relevant player in the Vikings backfield.
Both Mattison and Boone are two very capable backups and if Cook isn’t given an extension, they have two options that would be just fine for them along with the Vikings offensive scheme benefiting the running back position.
Potential Salary Cap Drop
The Vikings do have the cap space to make this extension happen. They have about 12 million dollars in cap space and with Cook looking for, at the bare minimum, 13 million dollars a season according to reports, the Vikings can make the necessary roster moves to give Cook this extension. However there is one thing to keep an eye out for and that is whether the salary cap could take a hit due to COVID-19.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, if the NFL were to play the season without fans, each team could lose around 100 million dollars which would in total be a 3.2 billion dollar loss for the NFL. Schefter mentioned that executives and owners have told him that the salary cap could go down from anywhere to 30 million to 80 million dollars next season. This would be a huge hit to every teams’ salary cap situation which causes some pause for concern when giving a player a massive contract. Especially a running back where their market value right now is at an all-time low, it seems like a very risky situation for Minnesota to pull the trigger.
Overall
I believe that Cook right now is making a huge mistake. Cook doesn’t have a lot of leverage in this particular situation. Just look at guys like Le’Veon Bell and Melvin Gordon when they held out, it did not work out for them. Everything that I mentioned in this article are huge red flags in giving a guy like Cook big-time money at the running back position. The Vikings should not have to be pressured into giving Cook this money right now when he has to prove he can play a full season and to have sustained success from what we saw last season. I also believe another piece of leverage the Vikings have is the new rule in the CBA. The new CBA requires players to report to training camp and to be available for at least 6 regular-season games for it to be considered a “played season” for that player. If he fails to do that, then Cook would lose a year towards being a UFA and would end up being an RFA next spring. He also would be fined up to 1.5 million dollars if he were to hold out which isn’t wise for Cook considering he currently is making 1.3 million dollars for just this upcoming season.
When you give a running back a long term contract you are putting yourself at a high risk. Look what happened to David Johnson when he got paid, he began to suffer injuries. The Cardinals lucked out and were able to trade him and not have to pay for his contract, but sometimes paying a running back puts the team in not a great situation.
So, Cook I think does end up showing up at some point in the season, but this doesn’t mean the Vikings should give him a long term deal. I hope Cook does get paid what he wants as I do think his talent alone is worth top running back money, but there is just way too much risk in giving him a long term deal at this point and time.
If you are a Dalvin Cook owner in fantasy, make sure you have both Alexander Mattison and Mike Boone on your roster and look out for any news that comes available on this situation.
Brandon's Breakdowns 