Apologies if already posted, but I didn't see it. I keep reading about Cook's red flags, but hadn't seen an actual breakdown before.
Shortly after moving in with Miss Betty, Dalvin began building the rap sheet that has given NFL teams pause. He was arrested and charged with robbery in 2009 (when he was 14); chargers were dropped. And he was arrested and charged with firing and possessing a weapon on school property when he was 15; charges were either dropped or abandoned.
But during his freshman year at FSU, Cook became known to Tallahassee law enforcement on three occasions. He was charged with criminal mischief after a June BB gun incident that resulted in broken car windows. Also that summer, police cited him for mistreating puppies when, according to a citation issued by Tallahassee Animal Services, a state animal control officer observed “three puppies… tethered directly around the neck by a heavy chain. The dogs were unable to move and the smaller puppies were choking. I had to remove them for their safety.” That July, according to an ESPN report, Cook was named as an “associate” in an assault case of two men the Tallahassee police investigated for allegedly brandishing a firearm at a neighbor; the incident took place at Cook’s apartment.
The summer before his sophomore year, Cook was accused of punching a woman outside of a Tallahassee bar after a confrontation and was charged with assault, to which he pled not guilty. While suspended and awaiting trial, Cook waited each day for the football team to finish summer workouts on the practice field, then got the script and matched their workouts by himself. A jury found Cook not guilty in August, and he was able to return to the football team, bursting into the national spotlight with 1,691 rushing yards in 2015.
And then there's this, which may be directly responsible for the relatively dramatic slide in at least media mock drafts over the past couple of months:
He was told that an agent had started a rumor at the all-star game: Cook was showing up to workouts late—if he came at all—that he’d arrived with alcohol on his breath on occasion, and with unsavory characters from the neighborhood in tow.
“I told these guys, You know me, you know I’m not going to lie to you… you’ve got it wrong,” Villani says. “It got to the point where I felt I had to go to Dalvin’s agent and tell him about what people were saying.”
The MMQB spoke with representatives from nine NFL teams on the topic of Cook, and two scouts independently cited the same man as the source of several unverified Cook rumors. This man isn’t a certified agent, but a “runner,” a sort of industry free agent who helps certified agents recruit players during the draft process.
