And Yet Another Injury to Dalvin Cook
K. Joudry
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The current belief is that Dalvin Cook suffered a shoulder injury in the San Francisco game. It’s yet another instance when Minnesota’s RB1 has missed time due to injury. Unfortunately, it appears as though he’s already dealing with another significant injury:
A dislocated shoulder alongside the torn labrum means Cook will be out for a little while. Fans and writers have long been advocating for the Vikings to incorporate more Alexander Mattison, largely due to the belief that Cook is too injury prone to sustain such a heavy workload. The Vikings can either use him less when healthy to try to have him for the whole year or continue with their current trajectory and lose him for several games a season.
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If you hop over to Pro Football Reference, you’ll see that Cook commonly gets more than 20 carries a game. The exceptions, of course, are in the games he missed (Week 5) and then the games he left due to injury (Week 4 and 12). He had 18 and 17 carries in the games following the bye, which is likely where the number needs to be. The 20+ carry games need to be a thing of the past.
In any case, the injury (or injuries) to Dalvin Cook means Alexander Mattison will be the RB1 against the Lions. He almost fumbled away the win against Detroit in Week 5, so fans may be feeling a little bit nervous. The team will likely feature Kene Nwangwu some on offense out of necessity. The kid is a sensational kick returner, so it’s plausible that he can at least be an upside third-down back. In theory, these two should be more than enough to overcome the hapless Lions.
Stay tuned for more updates on the Cook injury.
