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Never an explosive player for the Vikings, Matt Asiata still holds value for the franchise. He's a running back who wins with vision and patience more than acceleration, and his power improved over the season as he ran with consistently better leverage as time went on.

That allowed Asiata to compile positive yards at an efficient rate. He had the lowest percentage of runs for loss of any running back with at least 100 rushing attempts, according to Pro-Football-Reference.com's Play Finder, a set that includes 46 players. Of runners with at least 80 attempts (or five per game), only Shonn Greene beat him out, placing him second out of 57 players.

In runs of at least two yards or more, he ranked 17th out of 57 players with at least 80 attempts and 16th out of those with at least 100.

Similarly, a measure called "success rate" is favorable to him. Used to gauge how often a running back is "successful" with his runs (typically 40 percent of the yardage needed to convert a new set of downs on first down, 60 percent on second down and 100 percent on third and fourth down), it helps measure whether or not that back can keep the offense on schedule and how consistent he is.

Asiata ranked sixth per Football Outsiders, out of the 43 listed in their measurements.

That's not to say Asiata can carry an offense or add wins; he merely won't take them away. For a running back expected to be second or third on the depth chart (depending on how the Vikings intend to approach the Adrian Peterson situation and/or add another running back to the 53-man roster), that's pretty spectacular.

Add in his pass-blocking (already very good, and growing), and he's a big asset. There are things he can work on (his pass-catching needs improvement, even when taking away a fatal deflection that led to an interception against Green Bay) and a ceiling he likely won't be able to break (his overall athleticism), but as a backup on an incentive-laden contract that right now is worth less than $1 million per OverTheCap.com, it's a great deal for the Vikings.

His position as a backup is less important than Hill's even though he'll likely seeing more snaps in the Vikings' season-long plan (if only because the quarterback position is so important), but he can still provide the marginal improvements over other backup running backs that may mean the difference between winning and losing a tight game.