5 reasons why Dalvin Cook is better than Aaron Jones

Dalvin Cook outperforms Aaron Jones in yards after contact.

Cook is a slasher-style tailback with impressive north-and-south aptitude when the play calls for it. To an extent, Aaron Jones mimics this style of running.

Yards after contact is fairly self-explanatory. It’s a statistic used to identify how many yards a ball carrier accumulates after he is hit for the first time on a given play. In 2019, the very best in the business for this attribute was the man who won the rushing yards crown, Derrick Henry. He averaged 3.2 yards after every first-hit of a rush attempt.

In the same season, Dalvin Cook averaged 2.4 yards after contact. Among all running backs that had at least 500 rushing yards, this ranked 11th in the NFL. Not bad for a slashing running back.

Jones ranked a bit further down the list at 19th. He notched 2.2 yards after contact on all carries.  This is certainly not lackluster or light-years behind Dalvin, but it is meaningful because that 0.2 of a yard accrues exponentially throughout the course of the season. Bell-cow running backs in the NFL tend to get north of 250 rush attempts in a season.

The 11th-best versus 19th-best in yards after contact is a rather significant gap between the similarly-styled players.