Imagine how they may have looked with Sneed. I'm not saying Williams did bad but he doesnt do a lot of things sneed does to confuse qb's.

He's been much better than I thought he would be. Same with MVS. Think I underappreciated both, but ultimately trust Beach.

Exactly.

Ball hawking just isn't his game and it never has been. He's going to get his rare interceptions on miscommunications and/or deflections. He's just not a guy who's all that interested in trying to make a splash play on the ball.

He's going to look to make the stop. Maybe on occasion he'll look to get a hand in there, but more likely he's just gonna be there to be a last line of defense and mitigate the damage of a positive play by keeping it in front of him. Really, it's a wholly defensible approach for a safety.

I'll admit, I was pretty high on the MVS signing and had to tone that down quite a bit as the season progressed because he seemed so streaky. But then I realized that's just the nature of the offense now. Nobody is going to get 8-10 catches every week except Kelce.

And then he put in that performance on Sunday. :D

That's why they call them "safeties" to begin with. :thumb:

He seems to have that hunger that Mathieu lost last year.

I think his intelligence is underrated some. He is the QB of the secondary and his ability to get our rookie DBs in the right position is underrated.

Cook is a thumper, among other things. If he can stay healthy, he adds a whole different dimension, especially from Tyrann.

Yeah. Right now, we've got 3 safeties that are really good and they all do different things. It really helped against the Bengals, it was obvious.

Him getting his head around and batting that ball (after being burned on the play earlier) was the type of playmaking I wasn't sure any of our deep safeties had coming into the year.

Forcing essentially a punt on 3rd down was game-swinging, as I'm thinking the Bengals go for it in that situation.

I think Cook would be a fan favorite if we hadn't already decided he 1) was drafted too high, 2) wasn't a position of need, and 3) got too many penalties, even while making effort plays.

I mean, apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln - How was the rest of the play?

I might be more sympathetic if he wasn't 1) making/almost making plays and 2) if those same people hadn't decided they HATED the pick from the moment it was made.

legend

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See, here's my problem with this kind of op-ed (and I'm not picking on you, it's just convenient to use your post because it covers the main issues CP seems to have with Cook):

Who says he was drafted too high? Andy/Veach/Spags thought they should take him, so they took him. Are you really going to sit there and tell me that anyone on CP has more experience/knowledge about who and where to draft players than those three guys? Come on, don't be a dope.

Who has more inside info on what the team's needs are? Andy/Spags/Veach or Mr. couch potato football fan on CP?

All rooks draw flags, and they get picked on by opposing teams/OCs/QBs. It's both a tradition and an obligatory rite of passage in the NFL.

I'd say that Cook mostly exceeded whatever his rookie expectations were, some stubborn CPers notwithstanding. Has he been perfect or a huge surprise? No, but who ever is? He's been better than average and his play for the season has been a plus, not a minus. Consider it a steal and move on.