Cook Tore Labrum While Dislocating Shoulder

An underplayed storyline this season has been the decline of the Vikings rushing game.

Traditional stats paint them as league average, ranking 15th in total yards and 17th in yards per attempt. More modern analytics rank them 28th in run success rate and 28th in PFF rushing grade; in other words, a bottom five unit.

However you slice it — average, below average or simply bad — it’s a strange downturn for a run-reliant scheme that emphasized mobile, run-blocking offensive linemen and has started one of the league’s most electric running backs for nine of 11 games.

Now, with Dalvin Cook potentially out with a shoulder injury (national reports indicate he’ll miss multiple games), the Vikings are left pondering whether their weakening rushing attack will bottom out or perhaps hit an upswing with the injection of some fresh blood.

It’s first necessary to ask why the decline is happening.

One reason it’s not is game flow. It’s been well-documented that the Vikings have led by seven or more points in every game this season, giving them ample opportunities to run the football with a lead. Far more often, certainly, than in 2020 when they trailed for larger portions of games and, in theory, had fewer good rushing opportunities. Yet that club managed to finish fifth in yardage and fourth in yards per attempt.

The 2021 team has the 12th most rushing attempts with a lead this season, but their first-down percentage on those runs is seventh-worst in the NFL, likely because of the vast number of second-and-long runs. Minnesota has run the ball 35 times on second-and-10 or more, behind only the hapless Bears. In summary, the Vikings’ formula of getting a lead and taking the air out of the ball with the run game hasn’t come together like years past.

Two factors that could contribute to the downturn are worse run blocking and Cook’s health — one of which Zimmer acknowledges and one he does not.

The Vikings have shuffled the deck enough on the offensive line that it’s realistic the results could be different than last year with Rashod Hill and Christian Darrisaw replacing Riley Reiff, Ezra Cleveland moving sides, Mason Cole usurping Garrett Bradbury and Oli Udoh playing right guard. The position coach is also new with Phil Rauscher taking over for Rick Dennison.

“We haven't been able to get to some of the backside runs quite well enough,” Zimmer said, “or get them reached to the perimeter, so we've just got to keep working to try to look at some of those.”

But analytically speaking, the blocking results haven’t been that different. Pro Football Focus grades the Vikings’ run-blocking the exact same as they did last year: 18th.

So what gives?

The reality is that Cook was exceptional in 2020 to compensate for average blocking and has been a bit more ordinary in 2021. His ranking in yards after contact per attempt is down from 10th to 33rd. His PFF elusive rating is down from eighth to 18th. And he’s gaining about a half-yard less per carry.

Zimmer refutes that injury has played a role in the running game’s decline, but an ankle injury to Cook in Week 2 put him at less than 100 percent early in the season. NFL Network also reported that Cook was dealing with a torn labrum in his right shoulder — a report that Zimmer denied.

That injuries have slowed Cook is more believable than Cook organically losing his explosiveness as a running back. It also opens the door for a healthier back to come in and do damage under similar conditions, but the Vikings have had mixed results in the past when they try to replace Cook.

Since the implementation of their current system in 2019, Minnesota has played six games without Cook in the starting lineup, and they’ve only accomplished better than 4.3 yards per carry once. Alexander Mattison was the lead back in four of those games and averaged just 4.2 yards per carry combined.

Mattison was known for his massive workloads in college, and the Vikings haven’t been shy calling his number abundantly when Cook is out, utilizing Mattison at the expense of change-of-pace backs like Ameer Abdullah and Mike Boone.

This year’s change-of-pace back, however, is the wild card in this equation. Speedy rookie Kene Nwangwu is expected to increase his role out of the backfield after making his running back debut with one carry at San Francisco. His inclusion could be the spark Minnesota needs, especially with Mattison having a down year at 3.6 yards per carry.

“We're gonna talk about it more as the week goes on, but he'll go in there and spell, kind of like what we've done with Mattison,” Zimmer said. “[We’ll] try to figure out things he's doing really good and hopefully use him in those.”

Nwangwu fans may need to temper their hopes, however, that the Vikings will run some sort of running-back-by-committee like the Tennessee Titans did when Derrick Henry got hurt in Week 8, rolling with Adrian Peterson, Jeremy McNichols and D’Onta Foreman.

In the six Cook-less games since 2019, the Vikings have given their lead back 74 percent of the carries. Their backup has only received 16 percent. Not quite a 50/50 platoon.

If the Vikings gave multi-year veterans like Boone and Abdullah that small a job, they’re unlikely to thrust Nwangwu into a sizable role out of the chute. Zimmer expressed that Nwangwu is fine as a runner but will need to refine his blitz pick-ups and route concepts. Nwangwu himself said he’ll need to adjust his vision from the typical view of a kick returner, where he has thrived so far this season with two return touchdowns.

“I think the difference is just spacing,” Nwangwu said. “You’ve got more space with kickoff return and it’s like you don’t want to stop your feet, you just want to keep going and make your cuts at full speed. Being a running back, you want to diagnose and be slow going through the hole, then fast hitting it through. I think the main difference is speed and the distance between the defenders.”

Minnesota shouldn’t overthink it, though. Using Nwangwu could be the perfect curveball to perk up the Vikings’ offense sans Cook. Not only have their rushing numbers typically been down when he misses time, their play-action has suffered as well.

Without Cook the last three years, Cousins has more interceptions (3) than touchdowns (2) out of play-action, averaging just five completions for 66 yards per game with a passer rating of 78.9.

“Typically we get a lot more shell,” Zimmer said, “saying hey, we're not going to worry about the run. We're going to play a lot more coverage types of things. You're going to get a little bit more two-man, first and second down you're going to get a lot more Cover 2 and things like that.”

Cousins had a different view on it.

“I don’t know if there’s a consistent theme,” he said, regarding defenses’ approach when Cook is out. “I think it goes week to week sometimes with how a defense wants to play us and our offense, and even within the game it may change as to what they feel they need to take away.”

There’s actually some support for Cousins’ claim. In Mattison’s two starts this year, Week 3 and Week 5, he faced two polar opposite defensive approaches. In Week 3, the Seahawks put eight men in the box on over 57 percent of snaps, per Next Gen Stats. Two weeks later, the Lions put eight men in the box just 8 percent of the time. Most will remember that the Vikings’ offense was much more robust against the loaded-box Seahawks than the coverage-minded Lions.

With Detroit looming again on Sunday, the Vikings will need to do something different than Week 5, when they needed a last-second field goal to beat the winless Lions 19-17. Once again, they likely won’t have Cook.

The Vikings will be counting on their backups to boost the running game, which is uncharacteristically in need of a jolt.