2 min read • August 28, 2022
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In this year’s fantasy landscape, the end of the first round is the last opportunity to pick up one of the league’s proven workhorse running backs, true RB1s locked in for 300 touches and 10 touchdowns if they stay on the field.
(FantasyPros: 0.5-point PPR Average Draft Position 7)
The Vikings’ lead back finished 2021 as RB16 in PPR in large part because of multiple injuries that cost him four full games and large portions of three others.
Despite his lackluster campaign, the 27-year-old has an ADP of No. 8 overall and No. 6 at his position, going behind Cooper Kupp, Justin Jefferson, and Najee Harris and ahead of Ja’Marr Chase, Joe Mixon, and D’Andre Swift.
Cook has 280-plus touches in the last three seasons since recovering from an ACL tear in his rookie year and has finished as a top-6 RB twice in that span.
Over that time, the 27-year-old has averaged 93.9 rushing yards per game, 1651.7 total yards and 11 total touchdowns per season, and 2.67 missed games per season.
Cook’s bruising rushing style puts him at a greater risk of picking up injuries, as evidenced by his shoulders, which have each been dislocated and surgically-repaired multiple times going back to high school.
The understanding with Cook is he will pick up a second-quarter groin strain that knocks him out for a game-and-a-half, but return he to gain 200 yards and three touchdowns.
Minnesota, then, also has the most-essential running back handicap in Alexander Mattison.
(FantasyPros: 0.5-point PPR Average Draft Position 9.3)
After finishing No. 13 in 2019 and missing the final 10.5 games of the 2020 season with a Lisfranc injury, Mixon had a career-best season across the board in 2021 to finish with 16 total touchdowns and as the fourth-best running back.
Luckily for Mixon, his injury history outside of the foot in 2020 is clean, and he made it through his fifth season with only an early-season ankle sprain that he aggravated in Week 15.
With an ADP at No. 10 overall and seventh among running backs, Mixon will get a majority of the red-zone work for the high-powered Bengals offense; in 2021, the 26-year-old was fourth in the league in rushes inside the 10 and inside the five and will be working behind an improved offensive line.
Even so, he is entering his second contract after posting career-highs in snaps, rushes, and total yards at an age where many backs begin to decline.
Mixon’s 2021 campaign, the only time in his career that he’s finished in the top-10 overall in PPR or standard, could be either the beginning of an elite run or a peak that he never summits again.
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