Yesterday, August 15th 2023, the New York Jets finalized a 1 year deal with running back Dalvin Cook for 8.6 million dollars.
Pros
Now I don’t want to sound like a pessimist so let me start with the positives. The biggest free agent on the market this year wants to play for us. He went to camp, saw this team practice, saw the talent on the roster, talked to the players and the coaches, and decided he wanted to be apart of it. Every Jet fan should be proud that the organization has put together a team that the best free agent out there wants to be apart of. That is something we Jet fans never see.
Reason number two I like this move (despite from Dalvin Cook being an excellent running back) is the fact that according to multiple sources, if the Jets weren’t going to sign him then he was going to Miami. We don’t need any more opposing stars in the AFC East, especially the Dolphins.
Cons
Now Austin Ekeler might get mad at me for saying this but runnings backs are already amongst the most expendable positions in sports. They depreciate even faster when you have a paper thin offensive line. Robert Saleh said it the best on Hard Knocks, “you can have a Hall of Fame quarterback, you can have two $10 million-plus receivers, you can have the reigning Offensive Rookie of the Year, you can have all kinds of skill in the running back room, but none of it f—— matters until the big boys up front change who the f— we are.” Have we learned nothing from signing Le’Veon Bell? I don’t care how good Dalvin Cook may be, if the O-Line sucks then we just paid $8.6 million for an extra blocker for Rodgers.
Going into this year our running back room was a bright spot on the roster. We have Breece Hall coming back, Michael Carter is a great receiving back, Bam Knight proved himself last year to be an absolute work horse, and the rookie from Pitt, Izzy Ibanikanda, has had a great camp and preseason up to this point. The best apart about this is these guys are all on rookie contracts so we can afford to keep them all on the roster and still have money in reserve to address the O-line as well as potential injuries we may face over the course of the season. I’d rather pay a guy like Bam Knight a whole lot less than Dalvin Cook to put up 80% of Cook’s production.
I’ve also had Dalvin Cook in fantasy. Go back and look at his last two seasons. He missed a lot of time due to injury. It felt like every other week I was racing to the waiver wire to pick up Alexander Mattison. Another reason why the O-line should have been our main priority.
Now up until this point Joe Douglas has not made a bad move (except for maybe drafting Zach Wilson). We are going to lose if we go into the season with this O-line. We have a lot of depth (in certain positions) on this roster to make a trade. I do think there is more to us signing Dalvin Cook, and I am interested to see what Joe Doulas does next. Share your thought on the signing down below.
