Dalvin Cook had his red-hot rookie season cut short in Minnesota last season after tearing his ACL in the Vikings' Week 4 showdown with the Detroit Lions, but he has been on the healing road ever since and the team is expecting big things from him in 2018.

“I think he’s going to be pretty close,” Zimmer said at the NFL Combine on Thursday. “[Head athletic trainer Eric Sugarman] tells me he’s doing great and he should be as good as new — better.”

As far as his workload goes, the team still does see him as a three-down back, but they will be mindful of how he is used with concerns about durability know existing for him.

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“I think he’s going to get a lot of plays,” Zimmer said. “The one thing we have to be careful about with Dalvin is, you know, we don’t wear him out. It’s a long season; we’ve got to be smart about it, so we’ll have to have a — not necessarily a pitch count, but be mindful that it’s a 16-game, maybe 20-game season and we’re going to have to be smart about how we use him. Because he is a three-down back.”

The Vikings have Jerick McKinnon hitting free agency, but Latavius Murray still signed through the next two seasons should they decide to hold onto him. The have options to spell Cook when they need to.

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