Fantasy Football Today - Dalvin Cook Profile: Will He Catch More Passes? (06/11 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: June 11, 2022

Jacob Gibbs joins us with the advanced metrics on Dalvin Cook. Jacob gets into Cook's efficiency metrics and tells you why he may have been better than you realize.  You can also follow the full-length Fantasy Football Today podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-podcast/id261735167 Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs, @BenSchragg You can listen to Fantasy Football Today in 5 on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today in 5 podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today in 5 podcast." Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Dalvin Cook scored six touchdowns in 2021. He scored 30 in the two previous years combined.

So what will that touchdown regression look like in 2022? We'll find out right now on Fantasy Football Today in five. Adam Azer joined by Jacob Gibbs talking about a top five pick that's now falling maybe out of the first round, depending on your draft. He goes anywhere from mid-first round to mid-second round. Dalvin Cook had been a top three running back per game two straight years,

fell off a little bit last year. But we should expect more touchdowns. What would that mean, Jacob? Yeah, I love taking Dalvin at the back end of the first round. I think he has the upside to push into top three running back territory again. And a lot of it does have to do with touchdowns. I think he really just got kind of unlucky last year. Um, his touchdown rate fell from 5.2%, uh, just dropped in half to 2.4%. So that's the percentage of his rushes that resulted in touchdowns. Um, and then another one that I look at that I don't hear very often is touchdown dependency, which is the percentage of his fantasy points that came on touchdowns. Uh, the league average at the running back position was 25% last year. Um, Cook's rate was at 27 2019 and then 30 2020 last year

was all the way down to 17 um so among 18 players that had at least 200 rushing attempts he was the only one with a rate below 20 um so it's just there's clearly some bad luck there and he still saw a lot of opportunities to score touchdowns from you know inside the red zone um so the percentage of his rushes from inside the 10 yard line that resulted in a touchdown was down from 35 across the two previous seasons to 15 last year which was the lowest among qualified running backs um i think the main culprit was minnesota just had an unusually high um passing touchdown total last year. Obviously, they have some really talented receivers, but I think it's most likely that's going to balance out. In 2019, the Vikings had the fifth highest rush to pass touchdown ratio, and that was 18th

of 2020. And then last year, they were 31st. So I think more touchdowns on the ground should help Dalvin to bounce back. That's just the start of many ways that he could positively regress in 2022. Yeah, also, there were 10 to 12 running backs who had, or including Jalen Hurts, actually, so of all players, who had 12 or more carries inside the five-yard line. And Dalvin Cook had by far the worst numbers there. He had the fewest touchdowns. He had the fewest yards. So it seems a little bit fluky. Now, what kind of

efficiency did you see otherwise from Dalvin Cook? Is there anything else that, that says he's getting worse? Cause people are concerned about him, obviously. Um, you know, what did you see? What are the metrics? His efficiency did fall off, um, really across the board as a rusher, as a receiver. Basically, every metric was down, which shouldn't come as much of a surprise given the injuries that he dealt with last year. He had an ankle sprain in week two and then again in week five, and it was just kind of a recurring thing.

And then the shoulder dislocation, he was playing through a lot last year. So I think you can maybe attribute a lot of his dip in efficiency to that. One metric that did really stand out when i went back and dug into his efficiency rates was his um ability to create yards before contact and this is just you know narrative driven anecdotal stuff but i think it could make sense that that um coincides with like him still having you know the elite vision but just not being able to you know break tackles or create big plays at the same rate he's been able to because he was hampered by the injury so like all of his efficiency metrics that would be you know um based on burst based on tackle breaking

ability were down but his you know efficiency metric that is most commonly associated with you know vision and finding rushing lanes is yards before contact. And he was still elite there. Um, so he was ranked ninth in yards before contact in 2019, sixth in 2020. Last year was all the way up to first. Um, which is crazy because he was seriously like in the bottom half of the league and almost every rushing efficiency metric. So the vision was still there. Um, I think he just didn't have the same explosiveness, um, that we'd seen previously. Um, so, you know, after ranking top 10 in yards after contact in 2019-2020,

he was all the way down to 24th out of 30 qualified backs. So I think if that bounces back and he does have, you know, the ability to create yards before contact like we've seen him, you know, continue to get better at each year, everything could be in order for like another really efficient year as a rusher from him. All right. And hopefully he'll have a bigger role in the passing game as well. And, you know, if you want to give me just 20 seconds or so on why you think that might happen is Dalvin cook had only 34 catches last year and a career low 6.6 yards per

catch. Yeah. There's been a lot of buzz out of Minnesota's camp. He's going to be more involved as a pass catcher. Um, and if that is the case, that's really exciting. He's actually been one of the best receiving backs in the NFL on a per route basis. So since Cook entered the league in 2017, this is before last year's fall off. He had really horrible efficiency metrics, but 2017 to 2020, he had the sixth highest yard per run rate among qualified backs. Only Austin Eckler, Alvin Kamara, James White, Tariq Cohen and Christian McCaffrey were ahead of Alvin Cook. And I don't think that's something that people take note of. You know, people don't put him in that type of territory, but if he sees an expanded role as a receiver,

I think his per route metrics indicate that he could really like pop off as a receiver. Well, that was your Saturday edition of fantasy football today in five, talking about Dalvin Cook on Sunday, we'll talk about James Cook, his brother and what you might expect from him in his rookie season in Buffalo. Thanks to Jacob Gibbs. I'm Adam Azar. We'll talk to you tomorrow on Fantasy Football Today in five.