Instant reaction: Vikings sign Dalvin Cook to extension

A 5-year deal keeps Cook locked in

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Over the past few years, the Minnesota Vikings have paid everyone they like. And they like Dalvin Cook.

So despite a dramatic summer that saw some contentious negotiations and questions of whether Cook would be at training camp etc., he will now be locked in for the immediate future.

NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero reports that the contract is for five years, $63 million with $28 million guaranteed. ESPN’s Adam Schefter reports the Vikings restructured Eric Kendricks’s contract to create $6 million in cap room to spread out Cook’s hits onto this year’s cap.

Here’s a few takeaways about the deal:

Cook signed at the right time

I’ll borrow a good analogy from pal Courtney Cronin: The minute the car left the lot, the value was going down. If Cook had played on Sunday without a new contract, it would have reduced his value and made his negotiating position more difficult. Even though there was no “deadline,” Saturday worked as more or less a deadline for Cook’s side.

He also signed at the right time because comparable running backs like Derrick Henry, Christian McCaffrey and Joe Mixon already made deals, laying out a blueprint for how Cook’s deal would look. It allowed both sides to ask: Is he worth more than Henry? Yes. Is he worth as much as McCaffrey? Not quite.

Did Cook get a good deal?

At first look, it appears Cook did well for himself by pulling in $28 million guaranteed. That’s only $2 million less than McCaffrey and the Panthers’ star signed a six-year extension rather than five.

From an average annual value perspective, he comes in at the fifth highest paid running back, just a shade ahead of Henry and Mixon and behind McCaffrey, Ezekiel Elliott, Le’Veon Bell and David Johnson.

The guarantees are more important in grading a deal from his perspective.

Did the Vikings get a good deal?

This one might depend on where you stand philosophically. You could argue that paying a running back anything more than what they’ll make on a rookie deal is a mistake and that the risks are too high as Cook heads into his mid-to-late 20s. Recent history of contracts like Todd Gurley’s that have blown up and Cook’s own injury history and the age curve would all be arguments against a deal in general.

Since the deal is done, the best part for the Vikings is that it very likely ends up on their usual track, which means having the opportunity to get out of the five-year deal after three. We won’t know for sure until all the numbers are out but based on past history we can expect Cook to have a low cap hit in 2021 (somewhere between $6-$8 million) and then see that number jump up incrementally in 2022 and then the Vikings will be able to restructure or move on after that.

Being able to re-work Kendricks’s contract to spread out the cap hit to 2020 is big for the Vikings. We likely won’t see this extension get in the way of other key moves going forward.

Speaking of which…

Going forward they have quite the checklist. Getting Cook’s deal locked in helps them start the process of deciding how they will handle everything else. They will need to sign Yannick Ngakoue and Brian O’Neill to long-term extensions, possibly exercise Mike Hughes’s fifth-year option and decide whether to extend Harrison Smith and/or Anthony Harris.

Other decisions will include whether to cut Riley Reiff, how they might re-structure Anthony Barr’s deal and either moving on or re-structuring Kyle Rudolph’s contract.

Cook’s contract doesn’t make any of these things easier but is unlikely to hinder them either.

What does success look like?

As we grade this contract throughout the next few years, Cook’s health will be at the top of the list when it comes to determining if it was a success or not. If he plays 14 games per year and performs at the same level he did last year, it’s a win. At that level of performance, he is not easily replaceable. Anything short of that will draw questions about whether they should have played more hardball and franchise tagged him instead.

If Cook is healthy and continues to expand his role to play an even bigger part in the passing game, it could look like a steal from a value perspective.

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