Should you care about Dalvin Cook?

Rare Sunday morning post from me

The Cowboys came out of the bye this week and prior to gameday made it known Dalvin Cook would be activated this week. If you had been waiting on Cook for any reason, it has been clear that his lack of a real opportunity was a significant hit to any potential value, but coming out of the bye with this type of action does show a certain type of intent, and it could be something that could even retroactively explain his lack of usage to date, in the sense that they always knew their bye was Week 7 and they signed him right before Week 1, so the first six weeks might have always been expected to be his time to get up to speed with the playbook and show his ability in practice. In terms of whether he was or is worth a free add, the lack of playing time up until now is an obvious red flag, but you can at least hang your hat on that team action as possibly reflecting something.

The week after Isiah Pacheco went down, Carson Steele had gotten his first start, and we were still into Samaje Perine, but I got a lot of pushback on advocating for Kareem Hunt after the Chiefs had quickly signed him to the active roster that Tuesday. After covering him in Stealing Signals, I wrote a little mailbag post midweek where “Kareem Hunt vs. Carson Steele” was the first fantasy question (after an intro topic on coaching hires), and then wrote one of those longer bullet points in Input Volatility about Hunt as well, making a favorable case three times because it didn’t seem to be all that persuasive.

Part of the feedback I got through that week suggested I didn’t realize his peripherals made him in some ways the worst RB in football last year. I didn’t necessarily find that to be the only relevant note, and I’m not trying to victory lap this — and it’s not something I’ve really victory lapped otherwise — but I guess I do consider it one of the better pieces of analysis I’ve done this year, in part because it was out of the realm of what I’m usually looking for and in part because I felt a little on an island about it, where smart people I typically talk with didn’t necessarily see it the same way I did. I was never going to pound the table for an old back, but what Hunt has done has been useful, and was squarely in the range of outcomes of what I saw — and described multiple times that week — and it wasn’t difficult to get him added to teams.

As you can surmise, I see a parallel here. In this case, Shawn and I just added Cook to a high percentage of our FFPC high stakes teams on the Sunday morning waiver run. One of the things I heard from talking to a few people around the industry is there wasn’t much other interest in adding him, and most of those small bids went through unopposed. That’s a key note — the biggest high-stakes grinders, whose opinions I often reference, collectively seemed to believe Dalvin isn’t going to bury them. They may see some potential for him to score some points, but he wasn’t a priority because he’s unlikely to be the guy you need with some massive games the fantasy playoffs, and in some ways that’s all that matters. For those of you in shallow home leagues who will read this article and wonder whether to add him this morning over some other upside stash you’re holding, I’d probably defer to some young guy in almost every case, because the real ceiling is all likelihood going to sit there.

But while I’m not going to give a bunch of specific roster advice, I still want to talk through the cases for Dalvin, because it’s another one of those spots like Hunt where I don’t really understand the feedback I’ve been seeing most places. By most measures, like Kareem Hunt, Cook was really bad last year, and in some conversations earlier this year — right after he signed — a case that was made was we were fading him in favor of Breece Hall after he signed with the Jets. And look how that worked out.

And I get that. I mean, I was right there with it; Breece was perhaps the single biggest Stealing Signals Target in all drafts last year, and Dalvin was a Fade. But that battle had two important sides that made the play clear — you wanted to bet on a profile like Breece’s regardless, and you also wanted to find reasons to fade a profile like Dalvin’s.

That’s not what Dalvin faces this year. I haven’t been the biggest Rico Dowdle guy, so I’m probably missing some of his value, but it’s shocking how much Ezekiel Elliott has continued to play, and further shocking that something called a Hunter Luepke has a real role in this offense. When Dalvin signed in late August, his path to a meaningful role included a lack of real talent ahead of him. Now, it includes Dallas showing for six weeks they aren’t as committed to Dowdle as I frankly think they should be.

Still, the overwhelming likelihood here is that even if Dalvin has a role, that Dowdle remains the most valuable player in this backfield going forward. Some of the outcomes include Dalvin not even getting, say, five touches this week, and looking sluggish, and being inactive again in two weeks. Others, which feel more likely at this point, include Dalvin actually kind of sticking for a bit, and taking some of the Zeke and/or Luepke snaps, but still not being very good or mattering, as Dowdle still has the more valuable combination of role and juice.

But what I think was missed by so many in the Kareem Hunt thing is just how veterans are going to get deference in some of these spots, especially guys who have past pedigree. There were reports when Dalvin signed that he’s in incredible shape. Two years ago, in 2022, he had 1500 yards and 10 TDs, and then last year he only had 82 touches. It isn’t like Zeke, who started his decline in 2020. It could be more like Austin Ekeler, when you consider we aren’t as removed from Dalvin’s peak, and while Dalvin is about the same age as Zeke, he only has about 8,000 career touches compared to about 11,700 for Zeke.

With Dalvin, people will point to his peripherals and say they were weak in 2022 even despite the production, and you can use Zeke as evidence that a player can be in decline and still produce. But Dalvin never had elite peripherals — he’s always been one of those RBs, a little like Hunt, who exceled based on difficult-to-quantify stuff like “vision” and downhill running/speed to the hole — and some of his 2022 stuff like MTF/touch and YACo/attempt was right in line with his peak years. There is some other data that was bad in 2022, I can recall what, and those numbers did drop off in the small sample in 2023.

But I’m writing this whole post on a Sunday morning mostly to say that I think we’ve jumped the shark a bit with small-sample RB peripherals, like as an industry. We know older backs typically don’t regain form, but Dalvin’s numbers don’t show the decline people want you to believe, at least not as clearly as someone like Zeke’s do — and did for the past few years. And RB is still a position where we know the production is dependent on opportunity and the players are typically pretty replaceable. The other thing that makes Hunt the great comp here is he hasn’t actually been that good, because him still having the same juice as his prime was never the whole play.

Cook is a former high-end talent that when they signed him, Jerry Jones spoke about on those terms. This is a team that’s been clinging to Zeke’s past versus what he clearly is right now, and has been using its RBs as if they have not had an answer there. I do think it’s a less-than-likely outcome, but to me there are some pretty clear outcomes where Dalvin plays more than anyone really expects this week, and then — importantly — if he actually shows something, like Hunt did at least to a bare minimum, it could really grow. In all other outcomes, he’s a really easy cut next week on waivers.

So I just wanted to throw more of a theory point out here since we’ve been talking about bench allocation lately. Dalvin Cook is to me a perfect Sunday morning add this week because the likelihood is you just cut him on Tuesday, but also because there’s enough there that it’s worth doing. In this case, the team’s actions are notable, and the talk of him being too old to be productive is probably too certain, even if we’re not at all likely to see some younger version of Dalvin Cook today.

In most outcomes, I do think we’ll see him in the first half of this game, but we’re probably looking at a sluggish RB who doesn’t matter. If we do see some juice, though, it wouldn’t be hard to envision him as the team’s lead RB in about two weeks. That would suck for Dowdle managers, but we know that his usage has been pretty fragile for some time now, simply because of the players they have been willing to play instead of giving him a bigger workload.

Good luck in Week 8!