The Vikings placed Dalvin Cook on the reserve/COVID-19 list, and suddenly Alexander Mattison is looking like a key player for Week 16. The matchup isn’t ideal (home against the Rams), but Mattison has been pretty reliable when filling in.
In the last two years, there have been six games where Mattison has either started or filled a starter-type role. (Officially, five starts proper, plus a game in Seattle where Cook got hurt early, with Mattison taking over and carrying 20 times.) When Mattison has gotten on the field, he’s been good.
In those six start-type games, Mattison has run for at least 90 yards in all but one of them. He’s also logged at least 20 carries in all but one of those games. His one down game came in 2020, when the Vikings showed up flat for a home game against an 0-5 Atlanta team that had just fired Dan Quinn. Mattison carried 10 times for only 26 yards in that game.
Otherwise, Mattison has been golden, with at least 124 run-rec yards in all of his other five games, with 4 TDs. Though in fairness, three of those games were against bad Lions teams.
The Vikings this week are playing the Rams, and their defense appears to be better than any that Mattison has worked against. Los Angeles ranks 6th in run defense, but there have been a few games where it has looked only average. The 49ers in Week 10 ran for 156 yards against them, and the Lions three weeks earlier ran for 137. The Cardinals back in Week 4 ran for 216 (but the Rams held the same opponent to only 103 rushing yards two weeks ago).
I don’t see Mattison as a killer-type option for Week 16, but with how the Vikings run their offense (with him both a full-time runner and also catching passes) it would be an unusual fantasy team that had two running backs who graded higher for this week.
Cook (pictured) definitely isn’t playing this week. I saw him standing on the sidelines wearing a mask during the preseason, leading me to believe that he was unvaccinated at that time. If he’s unvaccinated, he’ll need to miss 10 days, leading me to believe he’ll likely rejoin the Vikings on the Saturday before their Week 17 game. Assuming he’s feeling OK, I would think he’ll be their starter that week, perhaps losing a few more touches than usual because of the missed practice time.
| MATTISON IN A STARTER-TYPE ROLE | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Opp | Result | Rushing | Receiving | PPR |
| 2020 | at Sea. | L 26-27 | 20-112-0 | 3-24-0 | 16.6 |
| 2020 | Atl. | L 23-40 | 10-26-0 | 1-4-0 | 4.0 |
| 2020 | at Det. | W 37-35 | 21-95-1 | 3-50-1 | 29.5 |
| 2021 | Sea. | W 30-17 | 26-112-0 | 6-59-0 | 23.1 |
| 2021 | Det. | W 19-17 | 25-113-0 | 7-40-1 | 28.3 |
| 2021 | at Det. | L 27-29 | 22-90-1 | 3-34-0 | 21.4 |
—Ian Allan