Tom Pelissero

USA TODAY Sports

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. – It’s a routine question NFL teams ask incoming prospects, but it meant more when Minnesota Vikings general manager Rick Spielman posed it to Dalvin Cook on the morning of Day 2 of the NFL draft:

Who’s coming with you?

Cook planned on living alone, he said, and that was an answer the Vikings wanted to hear. Because for all the raves NFL people heard out of Florida State about Cook leading up to the draft – good heart, great running back, A-plus program guy – a big reason a potential top-10 pick slid out of the first round was concern about whether he could be trusted to leave trouble behind.

“You’ve always got to put that stuff behind you,” Cook told USA TODAY Sports of his past issues after a recent practice. “It can be a learning tool for a lot of people. I go back home and I talk to some of the people in the neighborhood, I just try to get them to learn from my situation and just build from that. And that’s what I’m doing – building as a man, becoming a better person, with better people in the locker room and just being around the vets and learning how to be a pro.”

Dalvin Cook gives Vikings 1-2 punch to replace Adrian Peterson

Cook’s first month in Minnesota has buoyed confidence the Vikings made the right choice, and not just because offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur says the rookie has shown “all the same things that we saw from him in his college tape” – instincts, balance, explosion. He has worked hard at the facility, and despite his checkered past, Cook hasn’t given the impression he’ll require round-the-clock maintenance to keep his life on track away from it.

He shakes his head at the suggestion he needs to cut people out of his life. “I’ve got positive people that can motivate me,” Cook said. “That’s my family and my closest friends.” But there’s something to be said for getting Cook further away from Miami, where he had multiple arrests as a teen and developed a rough circle that kept popping up during his days in Tallahassee.

Cook’s entanglement in a string of police matters while at FSU – property destruction involving a BB gun (Cook got pre-trial intervention), a citation for mistreating dogs (he paid a fine), named as an associate in an assault case in which two men allegedly brandished a gun at Cook’s apartment, charged with hitting a woman outside a bar (he was acquitted) – coupled with an affinity for partying added to the red flags that scared off some NFL teams.

That’s why Spielman called Cook and spoke for 45 minutes before the draft’s second round. The Vikings didn’t have a first-round pick (traded to Philadelphia last year in a package for quarterback Sam Bradford) and never thought they’d have a shot to land one of the top two runners on their board. So while scouts had done background and running backs coach Kennedy Polamalu had spent a lot of time with Cook, Spielman wanted confirmation.

From high school ALL-USA to NFL Draft: Dalvin Cook, Florida State

The two talked about everything, Cook said. Incidents. Allegations. Rumors about the associations of some of those people from Miami.

“You can’t get caught up in what people got to say,” Cook said. “You’ve always got to get to the bottom of it, talk to the person itself. I think that’s why me and Rick got such a tight bond. He got to know me as a person, and got to know my surroundings.”

The story Cook told Spielman matched what he’d told other Vikings officials during the pre-draft process. He was soft-spoken, but articulate and polite on the phone. He sounded sincere.

“I think he has probably woken up a little bit about how important football is,” Spielman said after the pick, “and I truly believe that he is on a mission coming up here and is going to be a great football player for us.”

By the time the second round began, the Vikings were trying hard to trade up, eventually finding a partner in the Cincinnati Bengals to take Cook at No. 41 overall. With Adrian Peterson gone, Minnesota has some fresh juice with Cook joining the backfield alongside free-agent signing Latavius Murray and Jerick McKinnon.

The Vikings’ doctors had no issues with Cook’s shoulders, which have required three surgeries. Some underwhelming pre-draft testing numbers didn’t deter the Vikings either. And Cook’s freakiness as a runner isn’t really in doubt for anyone.

It was that trust off the field that gave the Vikings and everybody else some pause. Cook’s words to Spielman that morning carried weight. Now he has to keep living it.

“I just told (Spielman), I was coming up here to focus on football,” Cook said, “get on with myself and that was it.”

Follow Tom Pelissero on Twitter @TomPelissero