FSU football: Why Dalvin Cook is better than Travis Etienne
By Kelvin Hunt
The numbers Hale provided give a story, but neglect the overall picture of each team, which is what I want to highlight. We can see Clemson is the more high-powered offense with much better quarterback play.
Etienne played on better offenses but was only accounting for 17.7 percent of the offense over a three-year average. Teams couldn’t focus solely on stopping Etienne because they had to respect Clemson’s passing game.
Another factor to discuss regarding Etienne’s explosiveness is him NOT having to carry the load so much compared to Cook. Clemson had three running backs with 60 or more carries in 2018, along with Etienne’s 204 carries. They had one running back with over 100 carries aside from Etienne’s 207 in 2019.
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After Karlos Williams left in 2014, Cook never had another running back to have more than 63 carries in a season. After all, Cook had 169 more carries through three years, which is an entire season in itself, and still averaged 6.5 yards per carry.
Is Etienne durable enough to take on that workload? Cook had 766 touches through three years compared to just 572 for Etienne.
FSU football fans will tell you Dalvin Cook ran against eight men in the box, especially his last two years after Jameis Winston left the program.
The numbers reflect that as he accounted for nearly 30 percent of FSU’s offense over three years.