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If you don’t believe in things like Football Gods or karma, you might have some difficulty explaining the timing of Dalvin Cook making his NFL debut on the same night that Randy Moss is inducted into the Minnesota Vikings’ Ring of Honor.
The rookie is beginning his first chapter of a potentially great career in the very building on the very day and at the very time that the legend will close his incredible odyssey in purple. It’s just too cosmically perfect to be coincidence. And that’s not even to mention that Adrian Peterson will be in the house.
Cook and Moss are bonded by a shared experience: Their other-worldly college careers were immediately followed by draft-day anguish. Cook was rated by some as the best running back in a historically good class, but slipped down the board to the second round over “character concerns,” just like Moss had 19 years earlier.
http://www.1500espn.com/vikings-2/2017/0...lvin-cook/
Damn, I forgot Moss is getting inducted into The Ring on MNF...Could be a fun night if we win (and win big)
Lockette, who is now the running back’s coach at Oregon State, remained in contact with Cook throughout his record-setting career at Florida State and talked to the Vikings’ running back during the draft process.
“I called him and told him that he has to understand, you’re an excellent player and right now your character is being crucified right here, but you’re doing everything the right way,” Lockette said.
Lockette’s biggest bugaboo is that Cook’s “character concerns” overshadowed the parts of his character that determine whether a football player is successful. From talking to nearly a dozen sources about Cook’s time in Minnesota, one persistent theme is that Cook’s character is actually the driving force behind his emergence as the Vikings’ No. 1 running back.
Terence Newman doesn’t give any answers without close consideration, so as he stood by the Vikings’ giant video machine near the practice field end zone, he repeated the question a few times before answering.
“What part of his game do I like most? What part of his game do I like most?”
Pause.
“He’s a studier,” Newman said.
When Cook arrived at Winter Park, the Vikings placed his locker next to Newman’s. Not by accident, of course. And it didn’t take long for the rookie and 14-year veteran to build a relationship. Cook said in his first press conference that Newman was one of the players guiding him most and Newman quickly grew fond of Cook’s demeanor.
\“You don’t see a lot of guys having that commitment, [studying] their playbooks and doing all that stuff,” Newman said. “You can just tell he’s a hungry kid.”
“I don’t know anything about his character issues,” Newman said. “But if you ask me who I think Cook is, I’ll tell you he’s a kid that comes to work every day, minds his business and does his job. Got his [headphones] on, sits at his locker, minds his own business, [when he] talks, he asks questions. You can’t get any better than that.”
Here’s where Moss and Cook have something in common.
For every success story from West Little River, Florida or Rand, West Virginia, there are thousands who didn’t make it. For every player with “character issues” who turned into Moss, there were a thousand who turned into Karlos Williams.
Who?
Exactly.
Moss and Cook had/have support. Many of the ones who fail either don’t have it or don’t accept it. For Cook, there’s a group that believes in him led by Newman. For Moss, it was Dennis Green – who might have been the only person on earth he was willing to follow.
Mike Zimmer can tell you so much with only a few words.
“Everybody’s different.”
That was all Zimmer wanted to say about the rarity of Dalvin Cook’s speedy adaptation to the NFL game.
It appeared to be the intention of the Vikings’ head coach to avoid any type of hyperbole or added pressure, but Zimmer’s response carried so much more truth than that.
You can compare him to Le’Veon Bell because of his patience or his all-around skill set to Jamaal Charles or his elusiveness to LeSean McCoy or his character concerns to Randy Moss, but Dalvin Cook will only be Dalvin Cook.
The only one that controls whether he translates a good offseason into stardom is Cook. And the only one who dictates whether he avoids further trouble off the field is Cook.
Nobody else.
![[Image: 0B64rTMWu0YJQcjZfMWlsenByTm8_0.jpg]](http://www.1500espn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/0B64rTMWu0YJQcjZfMWlsenByTm8_0.jpg)
The road doesn’t get easier from here, it gets harder. More fame also means more people looking to latch on. It means more people in public with cell phone videos. It means you’re no longer a regional star, you’re a national star and the whole world is looking for clicks and views. Success makes it harder to stay hungry.
But Cook has the talent to someday end up with his number in the Ring of Honor.
And even if he isn’t out to prove the world wrong, there isn’t better motivation in the world than witnessing Moss’s ceremony before taking the field on opening night.
It would be nice if the local media did more pieces like this...
True, but 1500 espn is local and I really like the newer writers I am seeing locally.
Kramer and Goesling come to mind. There is none of the curmudgeon baggage or salty that came from the Sid era.
He is humble and hungry and he has beaten some incredible odds. I really liked him in training camp and preseason. Looking forward to seeing him grow throughout the season.
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