The Iron Chef!!

[Purplepride323]

16 minutes ago, Cearbhall said:

Your arguments apprear to me to have significant flaws. Letting players go to other teams on the free agent market for top dollar isn't always a sign of being cheap. All teams have to operate under the salary cap and have to build teams within that cap. Using money in a way that doesn't best promote a team's chances of winning is being unwise with the money. There are various philosophies on how to build teams but the empirical evidence strongly suggests that paying a RB top dollar is an unwise use of cap resources. 

Being cheap would be not spending the money allocated to a team under the salary cap. Teams are not mandated to spend all of it and when a team doesn't use it they are being cheap, possibly for good business reasons, but still being cheap.

Nobody here is suggesting the team don't use all of their cap dollars.

Not trying to argue, this is just an interesting debate to me, and it seems that I’m outnumbered but so be it. I’m a Vikings fan and I love Dalvin Cook and the dynamic he brings to the team. With that said, I think re-signing him long- term gives us the best shot at contending. Now y’all might disagree but that’s fine. If we had Aaron Rodgers or Patrick Mahomes I wouldn’t think re-signing Dalvin Cook would be as necessary, but that isn’t the case. We have Kirk Cousins, who is a top 15 QB at best. Dalvin Cook is the most important player on our offense and we go as far as he takes us. It makes sense to me to keep him around long- term even if he gets a big contract. Now would I rather want him on a team friendly deal? Of course, but with him primed to have a career year, I don’t think he’ll settle for a deal like that and I don’t think we should be reluctant to pay him, just because he’s a running back. That doesn’t make sense to me. 

Edited April 27, 2020 by Purplepride323

[Purplepride323]

11 minutes ago, swede700 said:

Unless you have forgotten, I'm in favor of resigning Cook.  I'm not against it, so I'm on your side, even if it's not for $15M.  But, the arguments you've been making for it have been tremendously flawed arguments with skewed interpretations of what's happening. If and when you've been around here long enough (as many of us have been here 10+ years), you'll find that when you make flawed arguments not based on facts, people will call you out on it...although generally, you'll be called out in a respectful manner, which makes us a little different from other places. 

You have to be more specific though, it doesn’t sound like you’re on my side. What part of what I said was not a good reason to re-sign Cook? All I said was that he’s a top tier RB and we should keep him around, even if it’s at top money for RBs. What part of that argument is flawed? That we’ve built the team around him? Every team builds around their best players. It’s a universal sports strategy. 

Edited April 27, 2020 by Purplepride323

[Cearbhall]

14 minutes ago, Purplepride323 said:

Dalvin Cook is the most important player on our offense and we go as far as he takes us.

^^ This right here is where your opinion and mine diverge drastically. I don't think that Dalvin Cook is one of the top six most important players on our offense. To me, the QB is always the most important player on offense. From there, the five linemen are the next most important players on offense. Somewhere behind that at TEs, WRs, and RBs and their relative importance to each other can vary. For what Zimmer wants to do I would agree that RB would be more important than WR or TE.

[Purplepride323]

8 minutes ago, Cearbhall said:

^^ This right here is where your opinion and mine diverge drastically. I don't think that Dalvin Cook is one of the top six most important players on our offense. To me, the QB is always the most important player on offense. From there, the five linemen are the next most important players on offense. Somewhere behind that at TEs, WRs, and RBs and their relative importance to each other can vary. For what Zimmer wants to do I would agree that RB would be more important than WR or TE.

Yeah I don’t agree with that logic. You can’t judge a player based on their position. You judge them based on their performance. Gus Frerotte was our QB during the Adrian Peterson days, so with your logic Frerotte was more important than Peterson? That’s why that logic doesn’t make sense to me. 

Edited April 27, 2020 by Purplepride323

[Cearbhall]

4 minutes ago, Purplepride323 said:

Yeah I don’t agree with that logic. You can’t judge a player based on their position. You judge them based on their performance. Gus Frerotte was our QB during the Adrian Peterson days, so with your logic Frerotte was more important than Peterson? I rank the importance of players based on their production not the position they play. 

Absolutely, without the RB (Peterson) the offense would have been bad. Without the QB (Frerotte), Peterson and the rest of the offense wouldn't have stood a chance.

[SteelKing728]

5 hours ago, babababa said:

Cook was 8th in the league in total rushing attempts. In other words he ran the ball more than most starting running backs last year. 

He looked Cooked after Thanksgiving.

[Heavydan85]

1 hour ago, Cearbhall said:

^^ This right here is where your opinion and mine diverge drastically. I don't think that Dalvin Cook is one of the top six most important players on our offense. To me, the QB is always the most important player on offense. From there, the five linemen are the next most important players on offense. Somewhere behind that at TEs, WRs, and RBs and their relative importance to each other can vary. For what Zimmer wants to do I would agree that RB would be more important than WR or TE.

I would put the whole oline as a group ahead of qb, but if we do it individually i agree with that order.

Edited April 27, 2020 by Heavydan85

[Klomp]

1 hour ago, Cearbhall said:

^^ This right here is where your opinion and mine diverge drastically. I don't think that Dalvin Cook is one of the top six most important players on our offense. To me, the QB is always the most important player on offense. From there, the five linemen are the next most important players on offense. Somewhere behind that at TEs, WRs, and RBs and their relative importance to each other can vary. For what Zimmer wants to do I would agree that RB would be more important than WR or TE.

I would say RB is a more important position to the offense, but I don't think RB success is tied to one player. So I'd be hesitant to break the bank for Cook or any RB.

[vikingsrule]

22 minutes ago, Klomp said:

I would say RB is a more important position to the offense, but I don't think RB success is tied to one player. So I'd be hesitant to break the bank for Cook or any RB.

If these early investments along the OL start to pay off, the need to have a highly paid RB diminishes. It’s hard to have a top 5 paid QB, a top 5 paid RB, keep an OL together and support the defense as the backbone of the team. 

[Cearbhall]

14 minutes ago, vikingsrule said:

If these early investments along the OL start to pay off, the need to have a highly paid RB diminishes. It’s hard to have a top 5 paid QB, a top 5 paid RB, keep an OL together and support the defense as the backbone of the team. 

Yep, you pretty much have to sacrifice somewhere. I would way rather go with the RB as the position that relies on rookies backed by veterans paid outside the top ten. Ideally, the rookie ends up being the lead dog but the veteran at least gives some competent play if the young gun is a complete bust.

For example, having Lattavius Murray and drafting Dalvin Cook. Or paying Chester TAylor while drafting Adrian Peterson. That seems to be a good model to me. It does mean looking to draft another RB every four years. To me that is more palatable than needing to draft a new QB every four years -- though you can afford the Christian McCaffrey's of the world if you do go with the QB cycle as your starting QB.

[Krauser]

5 hours ago, Cearbhall said:

One of the COVID-19 experts where I work has "grave concerns" about a second wave in the fall

...or sooner.

[whitehops]

3 hours ago, Krauser said:

...or sooner.

apparently Doug Ford is going to announce potential changes to the social distancing plan this week and I for the love of god hope he keeps them the same for at least another month (more like months). Until there's a vaccine that render people who take it "immune" then the virus will start spreading exponentially again whenever the social distancing laws are relaxed. 

[whitehops]

On 4/26/2020 at 10:24 PM, Krauser said:

I would just hope that the deal is short and flexible enough that they can move on after a couple of years if he gets hurt and/or declines.

i guess, if the vikings were to pay cook, this would be the way i'd be okay with it. assuming he gets somewhere from a $10-12 million extension, it better be pretty much year-to-year because if it's like two years pretty much guaranteed and even the third year is 50/50 cap savings/dead money then forget it. we do have some flexibility next off season with the cap but the year after we have to extend a few players (O'Neill might be looking at ~$15 million AAV) and cousins has his $45 million cap hit. 

 

I would just so much rather let cook walk, get whatever future comp pick, spend a 2nd rounder next draft even if they only gets ~85-90% of cook's production and then use the ~$8-10 million in savings to grab a couple solid vets at positions of need (let's say iOL). just to make a simplistic comparison, an alternative would be paying cook his money and then drafting an iOL in the second round and signing another OL for the vet min. 

[CriminalMind]

Good call on Brian O'Neil.

He is certaintly worth more than Cook to me. Plus he is a scare asset (high quality + young OT + reliable)

[SemperFeist]

There’s just too much data out there that shows paying running backs isn’t a sound investment. A running game is important, but running backs aren’t. Why pay $10M+ for a running back when you can replace his production for half the cost? 

People may not like to hear it, but Cook isn’t a special back. He’s a good running back, but he’s replaceable.