One of the highlights of the early part of this NFL season was watching rookie Dalvin Cook run. The Minnesota Vikings nailed that draft pick when they took him in the second round.

We’ll have to wait until next season to see more. Cook has a torn ACL, coach Mike Zimmer announced. That was the assumption when Cook went down during Sunday’s game against the Detroit Lions, and Zimmer made it official on Monday.

The Vikings are already playing without quarterback Sam Bradford, who has a knee injury. This continues a pretty bad run of luck for the Vikings. Last season, the team lost quarterback Teddy Bridgewater to a freak non-contact injury in practice, and he hasn’t played since.

The Vikings will obviously miss Cook. Cook had 354 yards rushing and 90 yards receiving and had transformed a Vikings offense that struggled badly to run the ball last season. Latavius Murray was signed in the offseason, but he’s still not completely healed from offseason ankle surgery. Jerick McKinnon will take on a bigger role, but he averaged just 3.4 yards per carry last season and was a reason the Vikings couldn’t run the ball.

Zimmer said he figures Cook will return from the injury and be the same as he was at the start of his rookie season. That would be great news, but it still doesn’t help the Vikings the rest of this season.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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