Dalvin Cook's Production Wasn't Enough

The soon-to-be-ex-Viking learned the harshest lesson yet about running back replaceability.

Over the past four NFL seasons, Dalvin Cook had 5,024 rushing yards, gained another 1,399 yards through the air and scored 46 total touchdowns. Only Tennessee’s Derrick Henry — himself one of the greatest running backs ever — had more yards from scrimmage over that span.

Normally, that type of performance would earn a player extra job security. But Cook is an NFL running back, so it got him either traded or (most likely) released by the Minnesota Vikings, ESPN reported on Thursday. Such is life at a position where “fungibility” is the guiding principle for every single move a front office makes.

I am aware that Cook would be due a cap hit of $14.1 million if the Vikings kept him next season. I’m aware he had shoulder surgery in February. I’m also aware that only a handful of RBs (Henry being one of them) were remotely productive at age 28 or older last season, the same age Cook will be in 2023. And I’m aware that Minnesota believes Alexander Mattison can slide in and replace Cook’s numbers at a fraction of the price.

That’s why they gave Mattison a 2-year, $7 million extension in March, essentially paving the way for this week’s news about Cook. But if we zoom out away from all the cap calculus and positional-replaceability factors that dominate every conversation in today’s NFL, the Vikings want to cut loose a RB who’s gained 1,100+ yards in four consecutive seasons in favor of a guy who has fewer than 1,700 yards in his entire four-year NFL career. Even if the granular details cause it to make sense, it stinks in the same way everything about the modern devaluation of running backs stinks.

Things didn’t used to be this way. Early in the post-merger NFL, backs who gained 1,100+ yards seldom left their teams for any reason. And when they did start to move around, it happened because of trades, holdouts, free agency or retirements. Until the mid-2000s, it was basically unheard of for a RB that productive to be outright released by a team that way Minnesota is on the verge of doing with Cook:

But the lesson of being a running back in 2023 is that no amount of production is enough to keep you off the chopping block. Maybe the complicating factor for you will be the salary cap; maybe it’s age, at a position where 28 genuinely does fall under the “freefall” portion of the aging curve. But we’ve gone from stud running backs being MVPs and team cornerstones to slowly chipping away their value, until a guy like Cook — at the apex of the position and coming off another strong year — is considered a liability.

Cook will land somewhere else, to be sure (hello, Dolphins?). But again, I mainly think this is a sign of how running backs are viewed — part of the ongoing shame that a position which contained so many of my heroes growing up is considered to have so little value now.

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Filed under: NFL