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A Peculiar Journey

Alexander Mattison's career has been peculiar. He's shown dominance when given starting duties, with 24 touches, 116 scrimmage yards, and nearly one touchdown per game. However, he's only started six games over his four-year career. Playing behind superstar Dalvin Cook left few opportunities for Mattison, and Cook's injuries were the only times Mattison found his way to the field.

As we head into 2023, Mattison is at the top of the depth chart. The Vikings released Dalvin Cook, and the hype train for Mattison started barrelling down a hill with no brakes. He's currently being drafted in the fourth or fifth round as a back-end RB2, despite never finishing better than RB39 over an entire season.

Given the uncertainty of his projected workload, our staff has a vast range of individual rankings. Some rank him as high as RB17, while others rank him as low as RB38. This gap among rankers has made Alexander Mattison one of the most polarizing players in 2023 fantasy football drafts.

The case for Mattison is easy to make. His per-start numbers throughout his career average 20.4 PPR points per game. Only Christian McCaffrey and Austin Ekeler surpassed that number last year, showcasing how high Mattison's ceiling can be if everything works out.

Here are the game logs from his six career starts:

Besides his impressive numbers in previous starts, Mattison has the build to be a three-down back. He weighed in at 221 pounds at the 2019 Combine. He is also consistently graded near the league average as a pass-blocker. And that's about it for the pro-Mattison argument. He's relatively big, isn't a liability on passing downs, and has looked good in the handful of games he's started.

However, there are numerous red flags that fantasy football managers and rankers seem to be ignoring.

Dwindling Efficiency

Mattison has been a hot dynasty trade target since 2020. He seized the opportunity whenever it arose, and savvy dynasty managers kept him stashed for years, waiting for the hopeful breakout. But over that time, Mattison's efficiency metrics dipped significantly.

None of these stats are accumulative, so volume shouldn't matter. If anything, decreased volume in 2022 should have boosted his per-touch numbers. Once known for his abilities to shed tacklers and break off long runs, that was missing from Mattison's bag of tricks last year. Rarely do we see a running back trending down in efficiency buck the trend. And considering he saw the fewest average defenders in the box in his entire career last year, those dips in efficiency are especially problematic.

As an early-career efficiency monster, most people (myself included) assumed he had maintained those numbers. Touting him as an offseason “buy” became second nature for dynasty analysts. But few analysts realized how much he's slipped over the last couple of years. Whether it be analysis fatigue or limited reps, he's not the same player he was in years past, and most people haven't taken notice yet. We haven't seen him start a game since the 2021 season, so memories are foggy.

Missing Context From Mattison's Starts

Looking at Mattison's six career starts, only two would be against teams we'd consider to have good run defenses: Week 6, 2020, against the Atlanta Falcons, and Week 16, 2021, against the Los Angeles Rams.

In his two tougher matchups, Mattison averaged 11.5 carries, 33.5 rushing yards, 2.0 receptions, 16.5 receiving yards, and 0.5 touchdowns. That averages out to 10.0 fantasy points per game.

In his other four starts, against teams that were bad against the run, Mattison averaged 23.5 carries, 102.5 rushing yards, 5.3 receptions, 45.8 receiving yards, and one touchdown per game. 26.1 fantasy points per game.

The NFC North is far from a defensive gauntlet these days, but we can't expect two in three of his matchups to come against the league's worst run defenses. That crucial piece of context is missing from Mattison's notorious start splits. He beat up on teams that couldn't stop the run and struggled to do much against stout defensive fronts.

A New Regime

Kevin O'Connell took over as the Vikings' head coach in 2022. After an eight-year stint with Mike Zimmer, the team wanted a fresh start with a younger and more creative mind. The changes to the offense were apparent immediately. Zimmer was an unabashed defensive coach. O'Connell, a former NFL quarterback, focused on the offensive side of the ball and specifically the passing game. After pacing for 574 attempts per year with Zimmer, Kirk Cousins set a career-high with 643 attempts in 2022. The Vikings' 64.38% pass rate was the third-highest in the league last year and a higher clip than the team ever passed under Zimmer.

A surprising twist in the new offense was a lower opportunity share for Alexander Mattison. After averaging 5.9 carries per game with a healthy Cook under Zimmer, that dropped to just 4.4 carries per game under O'Connell. Mattison maintained his 1.1 targets per game, despite a big bump in pass attempts.

Historical Comparisons

Admittedly, pulling historical comps for Alexander Mattison is difficult, so I kept it simple. Alexander Mattison has six starts and 1,670 rushing yards over his first four seasons.

I softened the parameters to running backs with four-to-eight starts and 1,200-1,900 rushing yards through a player's first four seasons. Over the last 20 years, here are the players to hit those thresholds.

• Chester Taylor
• Jerome Harrison
• Mike Bell
• James Starks
• Toby Gerhart

The best-case scenario would be Chester Taylor. He hit free agency after Year 4, left the Ravens, signed with the Vikings, and went for 1,504 scrimmage yards and six touchdowns before getting replaced by Adrian Peterson in the next year's draft.

Jerome Harrison was traded in the middle of Year 5 and out of the league after playing for his third team in two seasons the following year.

Mike Bell saw double-digit carries in all but one of his early-career starts. But he was out of the league after Year 5.

James Starks is a good example of a player who stuck with his team beyond Year 4. He spent three more seasons with the Green Bay Packers, starting in eight games and averaging about 42 scrimmage yards per season. In his case, though, the team had invested an early pick in Eddie Lacy, and his role as a backup was expected upon signing his extension.

Toby Gerhart, Adrian Peterson's long-time backup, looked great in a relief role for Peterson. In his six spot starts throughout his first four years, he averaged 91.3 scrimmage yards. After his rookie deal, he signed a contract to be the Jacksonville Jaguars' three-down back. He failed miserably in that role, averaging 3.1 yards per attempt over the next two seasons before retiring at age 28.

As you can see from these comparisons, the range of outcomes is wide. Chester Taylor, while being the best example, is also the oldest. His breakout season came in 2006, and he was on a new team. The most recent examples leave much to be desired, and coaches don't give running backs the long leash they got back then.

Isn't Alexander Mattison the Unquestioned RB1?

Ty Chandler, Kene Nwangwu, and Dwayne McBride might not be the most imposing bunch. But all are 25 or younger and 200-plus pounds. Chandler and Nwangwu, specifically, are much better athletes than Mattison. Mattison's stranglehold on this backfield isn't as clear as it may seem. An injury, a poorly-timed fumble, or a good training camp from a teammate could quickly flip the depth chart in Minnesota.

While much is being made of Mattison's contract, his average per-year salary aligns with other backups: Samaje Perine, Jamaal Williams, Jeff Wilson, Raheem Mostert, and Gus Edwards. And it's much less than we saw David Montgomery and Miles Sanders receive in free agency this offseason.

In addition to the current running back room, Ezekiel Elliott, Kareem Hunt, Leonard Fournette, and even Dalvin Cook are still looming in free agency. The Vikings reportedly had a $7M offer on the table for Cook before he decided to test free agency. Is it that hard to think the staff may be willing to spend some of the $19M in available cap on a veteran running back? As it stands, the Vikings' $5.25M allocated to running backs is the fourth-fewest in the league behind just the Seahawks, Rams, and Patriots, all teams who are flush with backfield talent on rookie deals.

Making Sense Of It All

Overall, the hype for Mattison is understandable. He's been touted by fantasy football analysts for years as a one-to-one replacement for Dalvin Cook in a high-powered offense. The spot starts we were allotted over the years were great. But projecting that production over a full season isn't so simple.

Now that Mattison's opportunity has come, fantasy managers are ignoring the obvious red flags: down-trending efficiency, questionable splits, a new coaching staff, some scary historical comps, and potential roster additions. It's possible that Mattison could step right into Dalvin Cook's vacated and elite opportunity share. But the reality is that Mattison is likely another dead-zone running back with little job security or guaranteed volume.

As discussed at the top of this article, the rankings for Mattison are polarizing and wide. While some drafters may be willing to draft Mattison with a fourth- or fifth-round pick, it's probably best to look elsewhere at that point in the draft and avoid this year's likely candidate as another dead-zone bust.

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