Mothman wrote:
Hopefully, it's someone who loves to stay home at night, play family board games and watch re-runs of The Muppet Show.
Totally!
Whizzinator.... I hadn't thought of that incident in years. That was a classic Viking's moment. Might be the quintessential moment in franchise history, actually. That, or love boat. (Might make an interesting poll.)
Mothman wrote:
I think he's likely to play well. I just hope he can stay out of trouble.
Well, the article talks about that, too.
But he [Rick Spielman] also knew why Cook was still available. Concerns were widespread over a string of incidents early in Cook’s time at Florida State, as well as the crowd from his native Miami that he ran with. So Spielman called the 21-year-old, who was at the mall with his family when an unidentified Minnesota number popped up on his cell. It was almost an hour before the two were done.
Later ...
So what convinced Spielman? The first thing was that everything Cook told the Vikings, in particular running backs coach Kennedy Polamalu, in February matched up with what he was telling the GM that morning from the mall. That’s why Speilman, as he puts it, “felt very strongly we weren’t getting BS’d.”
The second thing was a simple promise: Cook would come to Minnesota alone.
“Baggage can be a distraction,” said Cook, in explaining his plan. “Coming to the next level, you’re getting paid top dollar. And they want you to be focused coming in, they want you zeroed in on the playbook. Football’s what you’re coming in for. That was very important to him.”
Spielman and Zimmer also knew that the structure Cook would have around him was rock solid. The Vikings’ cyclone of a 2016 season—from Bridgewater’s freak injury to the offensive coordinator change to the offensive line’s rash of injuries—gave them proof of the team’s makeup. Also helpful: the distance. Minneapolis is 1,800 miles from Miami.
“A lot of the people we talked to felt like, maybe, if he stayed in Miami, that might be a problem,” Zimmer said. “But coming up here, and we talked about who’s coming with him, what his plan for the season was, we were comfortable.”
I've loved watching him wait patiently for holes to develop. He doesn't typically give you that BOOM "and away he goes" explosion into the secondary that AP gave you. But he also doesn't give that BOOM "Crap ... I just ran into my own lineman" stuff, either. Cook is also a lot stronger at the point of attack than I would have guessed. He doesn't go down easily.
As the article says, if he can get his dropped-pass issues ironed out, he can be a true multi-faceted star.