NFL Rumors: Dalvin Cook’s secret suitor revealed, D-Hop’s hot and cold landing spots

Today’s NFL rumors swirl around two big names: Vikings running back Dalvin Cook and free agent wideout DeAndre Hopkins.

A few months ago, the towering dominoes of the NFL offseason were Aaron Rodgers and Lamar Jackson, two mammoths in the market waiting for their respective futures to be revealed. Now, it’s Vikings running back Dalvin Cook and recently released wideout DeAndre Hopkins who could potentially find new teams.

Between the two, the Hopkins domino has already fallen as the Arizona Cardinals decided to cut him and absorb the losses. He’s the hottest free agent right now, perhaps soon joined by Dalvin Cook, who may be a post-June 1 cut candidate to save Minnesota a bit of money.

Where Cook or Hopkins will end up by the start of the 2023 season is anybody’s best guess, but one NFL insider recently spilled the tea on those two players’ top-secret suitors, including one feisty ex-dance partner…

Here are today’s NFL Rumors…

NFL Rumors: Dalvin Cook was nearly traded to Miami Dolphins this offseason

Dalvin Cook to the AFC East? It very nearly happened according to Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, who laid out the bare-bones skeleton of an almost-trade between the Minnesota Vikings and Miami Dolphins this past offseason.

Apparently, in March, the two teams came “very close” to a trade that would have sent Cook to Miami; it’s unclear what the Vikings would have gotten in return.

Here’s what Breer wrote:

"The idea, for Miami, was to add another big-play threat to an arsenal that already has two of the game’s most explosive receivers, in Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle, in the holster. And after that one came undone, and as Minnesota contemplated a price it’d be comfortable bringing Cook back at (which would be less than the $11 million he’s due), the Vikings discussed using him more sparingly, as an explosive complement to Alexander Mattison."

Seeing a team as offensively stacked as the Dolphins nab Dalvin Cook would have been too unfair, and luckily for the rest of the AFC East, the trade didn’t go through.

The Vikings already have Alexander Mattison extended and presumably primed to be the team’s RB1 in 2023. What to do with Cook has been the looming question of Minnesota’s offseason, and it doesn’t seem like the Vikings are any closer to figuring that out.

Breer notes that Miami might still be interested in pursuing a Cook trade, but the Dolphins have since upgraded at the position by picking up a big-play back in the third round of the draft in April. Cook’s unwillingness to budge on his salary has soured his relationship with the Vikings, and even though the franchise claims it wants to do right by him, this whole situation is more so veering toward the edge of a cliff.