Missing Minnesota Viking: Dalvin Cook

Despite showing electrifying potential, Dalvin Cook has only played a handful of games due to injury, yet still remains a crucial factor in the Vikings’ 2018 success.

Let’s face it, folks, the Vikings’ running attack was awful for the first month of the 2018 season. After center Pat Elflein returned in Week 4, it began to improve, but even in a 3-1 October, it still showed it had missing parts in being an offensive engine for the team.

The biggest missing part of that engine remains Dalvin Cook.

With a new play-caller, a new quarterback, significant injuries to the offensive line and the sudden death of its coach, no reasonable person would fault a coach for asking for some patience from the press.  But as we all know, this is professional football, and patience is for teams that are winning consistently–unless, of course, you are a team from Ohio.

Cook’s absence highlights several problems with the 2018 Viking’ in both the micro and macro perspective. In the details of the riddle is the fact that Vikings’ offensive coordinator John DeFilippo doesn’t design plays like Vince Lombardi. Perhaps if he had a bruising and complete offensive line like the Green Bay Packers of the 1960’s, he might, but with what he surveys on his Viking practice and game field, he relies on many modern moving concepts and a pass-heavy stratagem to move the ball.

Despite the statistical success of quarterback Kirk Cousins and receiver Adam Thielen with that modern and inventive stratagem, the Vikings are now 4-3-1, when last year at this time they were 6-2.

The big reason for this is quarterback pressure. In over 36 percent of his throws, Cousins is under the gun to deliver the ball. Under that pressure, the Minnesota Vikings’ offense has turned the ball over seven times this year (three interceptions and four fumbles), a giveaway ratio that is tops in the NFL.

This has much to do with a fairly lousy offensive line. When your starting left tackle was your starting right tackle, and his spot is now being manned by a rookie, and your left guard is the backup for career-backup Tom Compton, no doubt, you will have problems.

But Minnesota is not going to get Nick Easton and Joe Berger back, and even with Compton and left tackle Riley Reiff potentially returning at some point, it’s getting late. The one shot the Vikings have to improve their position in the NFC and make a playoff adventure out of this season is with Dalvin Cook re-joining the roster and playing at a high level.

If he doesn’t, we’ll all be looking at next year.

What Mike Zimmer wants–and needs, is what he’s always talking about, an old-fashioned power running game.  Now, why would an old defensive warhorse like Zim covet such an archaic thing in this day and age?  Surely another “trips formation” wide-receiver screen would work just as well, no?

Because he knows how effective it is. Because he’s coached a thousand guys about a thousand offenses. Zimmer knows that a team that can’t run effectively between the tackles (meaning the ‘A and B’ gaps next to the center and guards) usually stops trying it. That allows the defense to be on their toes flowing to a play’s design rather than having to stand their ground at the line of attack.

Dalvin Cook is not a power back, but what he remains is a ball-carrier that can expertly navigate, manipulate, and exploit the meeting (collision) of offensive and defensive lines. ‘Sunlight’ is not always there, but it takes a rare physical skill to find it, as well as an offensive attitude to keep looking.

As Zimmer has said in press conferences about his team’s success–and failure –to push the running game: “Sometimes it’s 2, 2, then it’s 22. You keep pounding away.”

Now, it’s to be noted that Latavius Murray ran well against Arizona and the New York Jets, but so would a few good college teams. Minnesota needs Murray, but with this offensive line, they need something else.

Murray has the body for the work, he just doesn’t have the talent to slip the crack, scissor into a seam, snatch something out of nothing like Dalvin Cook.

The 2018 Vikings may compete in a battle for the NFC North with their contemporary blueprint of Kirk Cousins’ bravery and precision and Adam Thielen’s moxie and heroics, but if Minnesota wants to step up and control their destiny in the second half of this season, they’ve got to realize that it’s time to do some serious fighting in the trenches.

If Cook does not return to the starting lineup soon and Minnesota stays on the path that has them ranked 28th in rushing attempts (in 2017 they were 2nd), they will continue to have an ineffective play-action passing game, suffer more quarterback pressure, and see more and more short defensive passing zones and creative blitzing schemes.

Right now, it’s just the way things have worked out. The defense is playing better, but there’s very little indication that it has the strength to carry this team to the string of victories that will be imperative in the next 4-5 weeks.

Remember, at 4-3-1, the Minnesota Vikings will need to go 6-2 the rest of the way to end up at 10-5-1. That’s with games at New England, Seattle, and Chicago in the way, as well as a 2018 re-match with the Green Bay Packers.

It’s more than possible to do it, but it’s going to depend on a young player’s hamstring and an old coach’s plan.