Wes Phillips Has Serious Praise For Alexander Mattison
Are the Vikings going to miss Dalvin Cook? Not if you ask Minnesota’s offensive coordinator, Wes Phillips. He wants to know why more people aren’t talking about Alexander Mattison.
Phillips had high praise for the Vikings’ new RB1:
“He always knows what to do,” Phillips said in his press conference. “He’s very intelligent, as far as our scheme, our system, pass protection. And then he’s a talented back when he’s running it. He’s always running forward. He’s got more wiggle than I think some people give him credit for. There were a lot of times when the free guy in the hole — the eighth guy — he made him miss last year when he had his [opportunities] and then made some plays in the passing game as well. So it was kind of a no-brainer for us to try to get Alex back.
“The consistency of who he is every day, what he’s put on tape every opportunity he’s gotten. His multi-faceted run game, pass protection, and then his hands in the pass game — his route-running ability. I think we’re going to see a lot of good things and maybe people didn’t realize how good a player Alex Mattison really is.”
Now that Cook has been released, the rest of the depth chart following Mattison includes Kene Nwangwu, Ty Chandler, and rookie DeWayne McBride. Speaking of McBride, I think he’s pretty terrible so Mattison is going to have to be a workhorse in 2023-24.
A season ago, the former Boise State product rushed for 283 yards on 74 carries. He’s going to get way more touches now that Cook is gone. The question will be if he can actually properly replace him. Mattison has a career yards per carry mark of 4.1. A sharp decline from the 4.7 mark that Cook had with the Vikings.
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