A community member asked me yesterday why James Cook is so low on my draft board. His ADP (RB13, overall-29) suggests he's a solid third-round get in most drafts and maybe even a late-second-round pick-up in 14+ team leagues. By comparison, he's my RB17 with an overall-68 ranking.
Yes, 68. I've placed 35 WRs ahead of him -- mostly teams' #1 wideouts with a few high-upside #2's. There are also several quarterbacks and tight ends I'd rather have than Cook.
Last year was the opposite, when I ranked him 31 spots ahead of his ADP. He seemed like a clear-cut bargain, and on the whole he met those lofty expectations.
The reasons for the market change from last summer to this summer are pretty obvious. Cook's proven he can be a workhorse, which in fantasy almost guarantees a top-20 finish. The rest comes down to efficiency, passing-game usage, and touchdowns. While Josh Allen poaches a lot of goal-line looks, Cook appears to check the other two boxes.
So why am I down on Cook? Part of it is the presence of rookie Ray Davis, who was a college bell cow and (despite reports suggesting he and Ty Johnson are battling for the handcuff job) is a much better bet to eventually back up Cook. Another issue concerns a potential dip in offensive efficiency with Stefon Diggs (and to a lesser extent, Gabe Davis) gone. The team has retooled, though this marks the first year they've lacked a demonstrably established 1-2 WR punch since 2019, when John Brown and Cole Beasley absorbed 46% of Allen's targets.
And yet there's a bigger issue, and it concerns research I've highlighted at least a couple times over the years. One of my spreadsheets includes college usage numbers for every NFL running back drafted (or signed as a UDFA) since 2002. It's about 750 players, roughly 180 of whom are still "active" (in the league and/or not yet officially retired).
Cook had 273 carries last season, including the playoffs. That's more than he had throughout college, where he topped out at 113 carries his senior year. He totaled 325 touches last season, which was more than his total touch count (297) in college.
In a vacuum, not a big deal. About 250 times an RB has had 350+ touches in an NFL season, and there have probably been 500 or more 325+ touch seasons. Cook isn't an outlier on this metric. His touch count is a little high, but nothing to sweat too much about.
Except we're not dealing with vacuums. Cook is somewhat of a unicorn, and not the magical kind.
Excluding this year's rookie class, only 31% of 7th round draft picks since 2002 earned the same or fewer college touches than Cook did. Among 6th rounders, 24%. 5th rounders: 22%. 4th rounders: 16%. 3rd rounders: 7%. 2nd rounders: 5%. 1st rounders: 0%.
This is a hit-you-over-the-head stat breakdown. There's nothing random about it. NFL teams are pretty good at spotting talent. Sometimes they whiff, sometimes they overlook a gem, and the rest of the time they seemingly know what they're doing. So when GMs behave similarly across the board, we need to take notice.
Sparsely used RBs (for our purposes, less than 300 college touches) aren't a "thing" in the first round of NFL drafts, and they've been selected only three times in round 2. Cook was one of them. The other two 2nd rounders were Tony Hollings (2003) and Chris Henry (2007). Hollings finished his career with 25.0 fantasy points. Henry (not to be confused with WR Chris Henry), finished with 35.5 fantasy points.
The deeper we go in drafts, the more frequently teams take a chance on little-used RBs. The steadiness of the trend line suggests this is entirely deliberate, even if it's not done entirely consciously. Little-used RBs come with question marks that workhorses don't have. Some go on to become complementary RBs. That worked out okay for late-rounders like Alfred Blue and Kenneth Gainwell. But the norm is disappointment.
The average career NFL fantasy points for light-volume (less than 300 touches) college RBs drafted in the 7th round is 27. In each preceding round thru the 3rd, the average increases: 6th round (48), 5th round (64), 4th round (139), and 3rd round (413). Interestingly, light-volume UDFA's average 102 career points.
That brings us to the 1st and 2nd rounds. We've already established that there are no 1st round examples, and there are only three 2nd round examples: Hollings, Henry, and Cook. Hollings and Henry flopped. Cook looks great . . . so far. For a nearly apples-to-apples comparison, we might look at Kenyan Drake, a 2016 3rd-rounder who was a top-20 fantasy RB three times. Except his usage gradually ramped up. From Year 1 to Year 5 his touch total equaled 42, 165, 173, 220, and finally 264. I would argue that his longevity and success are due somewhat to this steady increase in touches, rather than pushing him into a bell cow role from the start.
All of this makes me concerned about Cook. 325 touches isn't too many for some players, but it is too many for others. For Cook to meet or even exceed 2024 market expectations, he'll need to be a "light-volume" outlier. It's doable, and I also wouldn't want to bet on it.
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