Can James Cook catch a lot of passes for the Bills? We haven't seen that from

Bill's running back at a long time. Can he be fantasy relevant? We'll tell you right now on

Fantasy Football today in five. There's some excitement about James Cook, rookie running back

for the Bills, late second round pick. This is a role that we just haven't really seen in the

Bill's offense under Brian Dable, but he is now the head coach of the Giants. So things are changing, perhaps, in Buffalo. I'm Adam Azar. I'm joined by Sportslines. Jacob, he's got the best advanced stats, the best stats that you need to know and check out all of his work on sportsline.com. Jacob, why are you excited about James Cook? Cook has been one of the best receiving backs on a per-rout basis that we've seen in a long time. If you just compare his per-rout rates to some of the other big-name running back prospects that have come out recently, he really, really stands out. So during the four seasons that he spent in Georgia, so from 2018 to 2021, look at Target per-rout run rates. We've got Najee Harris, 14%, Clyde Edwards-Ellair, 16%, Travis Eton, DeAndre Swift, Michael Carter, all around 19%. And then James Cook leading all those guys at 20%. Yards per out run. Clydeborder Talaire 1.14, Naugie Harris, 1.15. Carter, Swift, both in the 1.4 range. Travis E.N.,

1.7, really, really good. James Cook, 1.98. Clearly, like, standing out from all these guys who,

you know, have either been touted or have, you know, been really productive NFL receiving backs.

And we've seen, you know,

Cook's former teammate DeAndre Swift has taken his elite, you know, college production as a

receiver and translated that to the NFL game right away. He's become one of the best

receiving backs in the NFL. And we have route running opportunities available in Buffalo. It hasn't

been, you know, the running back position hasn't been prioritized in the passing game there. But that could have a lot to do with Devin Singletary and Dave, Ball, as you mentioned. But yeah, Singletary has been running some of the most empty routes of any player in the NFL. Najee Harris, Ezekiel Eli, and Austin Echler, with the only running backs who had more routes than Singletary last year. Yeah, which, yeah, people don't realize. So he just doesn't throw it. It's just Josh out. He did nothing with those routes. Among 200 players with at least 350 routes run, Singletary ranked 180th in targets per outrun, and 198th in yards per out run. So he saw them try to sign McKissick and then eventually bringing James Cook, everything points towards him, potentially having a big role as a receiver. Okay. And I don't know if he's going to have a big role as a rusher, but if he does, has he shown he's capable of succeeding as a rusher? I think so, yeah. When I really got into his metrics, what really said out was his ability to create yards before contact. That's something we talked about with Dalvin. He's really taking a step forward as NFL player. That's something we've

also seen from DeAndre Swift, Cook, another easyback to compare to Cook too. So Cook was right in line

with the average of the other prospects in the 2022 class in terms of ability to break tackles

and creating yards after contact. But when you look at his yards before contact, he clearly stood out.

Hearing first, among the qualified prospects, he was the only guy with a rate above 2.75.

Rashad White was right there. Cook was at 2.95.

Nobody else was even above 2.4 yards before contact.

So clearly stood out in that regard in the

same way that Swift did. And so just on that note, I wanted to compare him and Swift. And when I did,

Cook really stood out in every regard. He had a higher broken tackle rate than Swift during their

time at Georgia. He had a higher yard before contact rate. Swift had a slightly higher yards after contact

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