Fantasy Football: 3 Things We Learned From Week 3

Dalvin Cook Is a True Workhorse Running Back

Entering the season, there were concerns about Dalvin Cook's role in the Minnesota Vikings' offense. The team had just signed Latavius Murray and already had a passing-down guy in Jerick McKinnon, so what did that leave for Cook? People worried that Cook would simply become a between-the-20s grinder who would lose passing downs and goal-line work to the other backs on the team (similar to Ameer Abdullah).

Well, it looks like those worries were for naught, as Cook is cornering the market for Vikings running back opportunities. In their blowout win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Vikings gave Cook 27 carries. He did not cede any work to Murray and even made 5 receptions for a whopping 72 yards, playing 73% of the team's snaps.

It's encouraging for fantasy purposes that the Vikings did not use Murray, a more expendable back, to grind down the clock at the end of the game. Instead, Cook stayed in and kept accumulating fantasy points.

And that's a good thing for the Vikings, too; our Net Expected Points (NEP) metric indicates that Cook is an elite producer.

Cook's Rushing NEP per carry -- or the expected value he adds to his team every time he touches the ball -- ranks in the top five among backs with at least 15 carries this season. Among the same subset, Cook is also in the top five in Rushing Success Rate, the percentage of his touches that positively impact NEP. The dude is balling out, both in fantasy and real football.

Opportunity is key for running backs in fantasy football, and it looks like Cook is going to be a workhorse back in 2017.