Bills still have a James Cook decision to make after $48 million contract

Billy Heyen

Bills still have a James Cook decision to make after $48 million contract image

To those that didn't watch the Buffalo Bills religiously last season, it would've been easy to miss.

James Cook put up huge numbers, so he must've played a ton, right?

Not exactly.

The star running back was on the field for less than half of the Bills' snaps.

ESPN's Alaina Getzenberg provided the breakdown in a new write-up on Thursday: Cook 47.6% of offensive snaps, Ty Johnson 29.0%, Ray Davis 24.3%.

Johnson was the third-down back, while Davis was the backup to Cook on early downs.

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At times, it seemed like Buffalo just swapped out its RBs with no real strategy, just deciding a series was going to go to someone other than Cook.

Now that Cook has signed a four-year, $48 million contract extension, the Bills have to decide if they want to keep this breakdown.

On the one hand, it probably does keep Cook nice and fresh.

On the other hand, the Bills are now paying Cook a lot of money to keep him on the sideline more than half the time.

"Despite Cook holding in for much of camp before reaching a contract extension on Wednesday, the Bills did not show anything in practice to indicate a different approach this season," Getzenberg writes.

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Buffalo fans won't mind if it ends in a Super Bowl.

But if Cook is for some reason on the sideline in a big moment, it'll be questionable. It's something the Bills have had time to figure out. Fans will have to wait for the big games down the stretch to see just how much Buffalo plans to change, or not change, based on Cook's raise.

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Billy Heyen

Billy Heyen is a freelance writer with The Sporting News. He is a 2019 graduate of Syracuse University who has written about many sports and fantasy sports for The Sporting News. Sports reporting work has also appeared in a number of newspapers, including the Sandusky Register and Rochester Democrat & Chronicle