Depending on who you talk to -- whether they be beat reporters or unconnected Twitter prognosticators -- James Cook is slated to either be the pass-catching half of a committee backfield shared with Damien Harris or the Buffalo Bills’ version of a Jamaal Charles-ian space back at RB1 in 2023. As the RB29 over on Underdog and RB28 in recent dynasty startups on Sleeper, there’s quite a bit of juice to squeeze out of Cook’s current valuation if the latter situation comes to fruition this season, a turn of events that would also have a large impact on the viability of Harris as a startable asset in all formats. The purpose of this article is to examine the relevant information and come to some sort of conclusion on how Cook’s sophomore NFL season is likely to turn out, and from there to make recommendations for how he should be treated as a fantasy asset.

First things first: Cook was good as a rookie. He caught only 21 passes and earned just a 5.7% Target Share (a 32nd-percentile mark among NFL backs in the last seven years), but his usage as a pass-catcher was right on par with the advanced stuff he flashed as a committee runner at Georgia. Cook came out of college having split out wide or lined up in the slot on over a quarter of his snaps, having been targeted more than a yard downfield on average, having been utilized on route trees with at least 82nd-percentile Diversity in each of his last two seasons, and having averaged more than ten yards after the catch per reception despite relatively low usage on the types of Mickey Mouse, behind-the-line-of-scrimmage pass patterns that are especially conducive to YAC creation. As an NFL rookie, he was one of just 17 running backs (among guys with at least 10 targets on the year) who lined up out wide or in the slot on over 20% of his snaps, he was one of just 12 backs with an average depth of target of at least two yards downfield, and while his YAC numbers came back down to Earth a bit (he ranked 54th out of 82 total qualifying runners and 7th out of the dozen guys with 2+ yard aDOTs), his versatility as a route runner translated to the pro game seamlessly. The former Bulldog posted 74th-percentile Route Diversity, was used on basic, checkdown-type routes at rates significantly lower than are the vast majority of professional backs, commanded targets at a 91st-percentile RATE on a per-route basis despite playing with a scrambling quarterback who historically targeted running backs at a below-average clip, and was especially dynamic on high value, high degree-of-difficulty pass patterns, as he both ran and earned targets at above-average rates on out, angle, dig, and wheel routes, all of which ask backs to beat coverage defenders downfield.

Cook was one of the best receiving backs in the NFL already last season, but he was also effective on the ground. There, he averaged 5.7 yards per carry -- more than a yard greater than what the other Bills running backs collectively produced -- and managed a Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating of 121.3% that lands in the 78th percentile among recent pro runners. That mark was aided by a 94th-percentile Breakaway Conversion Rate of 50%, as Cook extended six of his twelve 10-yard chunk runs into breakaways of at least 20 yards, and it was complemented by a Relative Success Rate of -0.1% that indicates Cook was essentially duplicating the per-carry consistency of the more traditional inside runners that made up the rest of Buffalo’s running back room. Still, the situations in which Cook was most often running the ball don’t offer much evidence that he can be a true three-down back in the way that offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey has alluded to this offseason.

For starters, the defensive fronts that Cook ran into last season were pretty light, averaging just 6.88 defenders on a per-carry basis. That mark is in the 35th percentile among all backs in the last two seasons, and it wasn’t just a product of Cook’s playing on a pass-heavy offense led by one of the best quarterbacks in the league: he also saw 0.14 fewer defenders in the box, on average, than the other Bills running backs did on their carries, a disparity that itself lands in the 34th percentile among recent NFL backs. Playerprofiler.com shows us that Cook enjoyed the fifth-highest rate (nearly two thirds, at 65.9%) of light boxes on his carries among all pro runners, and he was handed the ball a total of zero times within five yards of the goal-line, something that happened just seven times across his four seasons at Georgia (compared to a combined 68 goal-line attempts for the other guys in the Bulldog running back room during that time). He also enjoyed very light defensive fronts in college, as the 6.46 men he saw in the average box was 0.18 defenders lighter than what his Georgia teammates ran against, a disparity in the 8th percentile.

Basically, the idea that Cook could be a real, legitimate three-down back in 2023 is based almost completely on projection, because he’s never done the things that real, legitimate three-down backs have to do. The sample we have of him in short-yardage situations is small, the sample we have of him in obvious running situations is small, and the sample we have of him, period, is small: he’s carried the ball fewer times in the last five years -- a time-frame spanning his entire college career in addition to his rookie season in the NFL -- than Josh Jacobs or Derrick Henry carried it in 2022 alone. We have no idea how well his body -- which, even if we give him credit for the 204 pounds he weighed at his Pro Day rather than the 190 that he’s currently listed at on the Bills website, is both particularly light and more slender than the frames of classic satellite backs like Chris Thompson, Theo Riddick, and Nyheim Hines -- is capable of holding up under the burden of even 15 carries in a single game, let alone 15 per game.

Chris Thompson was my favorite comp for James Cook last offseason, and his 2017 usage with Washington represents one of the few avenues by which satellite backs can score like RB1s in fantasy.

I’m of the belief that we should assume running backs can handle (whatever “handle” means) a sizable workload until presented with definitive proof otherwise, but that is a) mostly in regards to guys who are of at least decent size (like the lightly-used but 220-pound Josh Jacobs back in 2019), and b) far less important than what real life coaches believe will maximize their chances of winning football games. To that second point, it’s simply true that smaller running backs don’t touch the ball as often as bigger running backs do, regardless of my belief that a Duke Johnson- or Kenneth Gainwell-type player could hypothetically “handle” a 200+ touch workload. I also don’t think the relevance of this distinction simply comes down to Dorsey and head coach Sean McDermott either deciding that Cook is big enough to play a lot or not. They certainly have to consider how well his body -- and efficiency -- might hold up under increased work, but they also have to weigh Cook’s ability to run the ball in various situations: between the tackles, at the goalline, while icing a four-point lead at midfield with three minutes to go in the fourth quarter. Either Cook needs to be the team’s best option in those situations -- something we’ve already established he can offer very little evidence for -- or he needs to provide so much ancillary value (via the receiving game, defensive personnel matching, etc.) that it’s worth having him on the field in those situations despite not being the team’s best option for them specifically. Undersized guys like Christian McCaffrey, Marshall Faulk, and Chris Johnson have threaded that needle well enough to produce elite fantasy seasons in the past, but the finesse (or, rather, the brutality) required is exceedingly rare among that archetype.

This article is not just a thought experiment, though: Harris and Latavius Murray are both on this roster, and their on-field capabilities are very relevant in determining whether a significant increase in Cook’s workload will need to come from that ancillary value or is attainable via ball-carrying merit. In terms of the short-yardage and goal-line role, I don’t think it’s likely that he ends up the team’s best option.

NFL running backs collectively converted 62.5% of their three-or-fewer-yards-to-go opportunities into either first downs or touchdowns last season; Murray has converted 71.3% of his 94 such opportunities in the last three years, while Harris has converted 77.1% of his 70 opportunities in the same time-frame. Cook did convert 12 of his 14 short-yardage carries last season -- good for an 85.7% conversion rate -- but that feels more like small sample shenanigans than it does a strong indicator of actual mastery. Cook converted these kinds of opportunities at a rate slightly below the collective rate of the other backs on the team over the course of his career at Georgia (on a sample of 27 carries), and his Relative Success Rate when limited to runs into heavy defensive fronts (8+ men) was a -6.6% mark that would land in the 5th percentile if it were an overall score. Additionally, half of the short-yardage carries that Cook handled as a rookie came against standard, seven-man boxes, and he averaged just 7.43 men in the box on all of his short-yardage attempts, fewer than Christian McCaffrey saw on his average carry -- 7.47 -- during his second-half stretch in San Francisco. The success that Cook experienced in this area last season was aided by abnormally smooth seas, and I’m quite confident that the proven success of the veteran, 215+ pound running backs on this roster will outweigh the fact that Bills’ playcallers caught defenses sleeping with the 190-pound Cook in a hot streak of short-yardage situations.

Christian McCaffrey ran into heavier defensive fronts on his average carry with the 49ers in 2022 than James Cook did on his average short-yardage carry.

As a final devil’s advocate point on this subject, though, I will point out that Buffalo used 11 personnel -- a grouping that includes just one each of running back and tight end, so no fullback and three receivers -- on 64% of their short-yardage carries in 2022. Maybe Cook is the most convincing guy they have to throw in the backfield on short-yardage plays on which they’re hoping to catch the defense expecting pass, in which case he could be like the east coast Austin Ekeler as a smaller back whose versatility enables him to feast at the goal-line on a great offense (but minus the half of those carries that Josh Allen will inevitably steal). I don’t think that’s likely, but it wouldn’t be unprecedented.

I also think the veteran backs on this team -- especially Harris -- are equipped just fine for primary ball-carrier responsibilities in general. Both of them have adequate size, both of them have 200-carry, lead-back seasons on their NFL resumes, and, of particular importance, both of them have been solid runners in recent years:

Neither of these guys are superstars, but they are rock solid two-down backs. Harris seems to have a leg up on Murray in the early pecking order, but it’s also worth monitoring his injury situation. I think either of them, however, is better suited to absorbing low-calorie early-down work between the 20s than Cook is; these guys reliably produce above their situational means in terms of both average output and per-carry consistency, the latter something we’ve never seen from Cook, and both of them things we’ve never seen from Cook in the context of a legitimate workload that includes blue collar carries on running downs in the middle of the field. Because of that -- in addition to the advantage that I believe Harris and Murray have over Cook as short-yardage runners -- I’m currently projecting Cook to finish behind Harris in the rush attempts column while accounting for 35% of the team’s total attempts by running backs.

Behind only AJ Dillon and Jahmyr Gibbs, that would make Cook the third-most involved RB2 in the league, and I also have him projected for a significant expansion on his first-year receiving role. Based on the team-level play volume and pass/run split numbers that I’m working with for the Bills, Cook’s projected target share of 11% would give him 73 targets in 17 games, a mark that would a) be a top-ten number among league-wide backs in six of the last seven seasons, and b) more than double his role from year. Considering that Allen is a running quarterback who has not traditionally targeted running backs at high rates -- he’s never targeted an individual runner more than 53 times in a season -- such a total might seem lofty (and the projections of both Mike Clay and Jakob Sanderson have Cook with fewer targets than I have him pegged for), but I think my projection is reasonable for multiple reasons: 1) Cook already proved to be the exception to the Allen-doesn’t-throw-to-running-backs-at-high-rates rule last season, 2) Allen has targeted running backs at increasing rates on per-season, per-game, and per-throw bases in each year since he emerged as a premier quarterback in 2020 (see table below), and 3) the 11% target share that produces it isn’t a high bar relative to the involvement of other backs around the league -- an average of 18 runners per year have reached that mark in the last three seasons, and an average of nearly 21 per year reached that mark across the last seven seasons.

Overall, I have Cook projected for 547 yards on 109 carries and 55 receptions for 471 yards on his 73 targets, as well as for a total of 5.8 touchdowns. Those numbers would give him a per-game average of 11.2 PPR points that would make him the RB29 based on my projections for other running backs around the league as well as a neutral value given his ADP in both dynasty and best ball drafts.

However, I also think there’s some wiggle room in that projection. If reports about Cook’s clear lead over Harris and Murray in the training camp snaps race are to be taken at face value as indicators of in-season usage, then something closer to a 50% carry share could be in the cards for the second-year back. If we plug that number -- along with the slight bump in target share that would result from simply being on the field more often -- into the projections machine, we’re left with a workload approaching the 150-carry and 90-target thresholds feeding into fantasy output that flirts with 14 points per game. At that point, Cook would provide a substantial return on investment without needing to run away with the early-down rushing work or operate as the Bills’ primary goal-line runner. Because of that hypothetical world, I’m on board with Cook as a pick that straddles the line between floor and ceiling rather well.

The other two guys in this backfield are less interesting. Cook’s dynamism will keep Harris from completely dominating carries, so any chance the latter has of being better than an 8-points-per-game streaming option (outside of the obvious injury-related caveats) will depend on his running hot at the goal-line on a team that used its quarterback inside the five-yard line last season just as often as the Raiders ran Josh Jacobs in those spots. Murray could duplicate Harris’ output in the event of an injury to the former Patriot, but Cook would probably absorb more of the early-down work in that situation.