Actual football—and thus, substantive topics that fans can have genuine discourse about—is so close, with the NFL’s first preseason game of the 2024 campaign scheduled to kick off this Thursday. We’re still in the annual offseason lull at the moment, however, and per usual, EA Sports is here to rile up fans with player ratings ahead of its annual Madden release.

This year’s edition of the game—aptly named Madden NFL 25—will hit shelves on August 16, and EA Sports is filling the days between now and release by revealing player ratings one position at a time. The company unveiled its running back ratings on Tuesday afternoon, and the number attributed to Buffalo Bills running back James Cook is so egregiously low that one genuinely wonders if the person who determined his attributes watched him play football last year.

Cook grades out to an 81 overall, tied for the 15th-highest rating amongst running backs. There are 27 players who have the same or better overall ratings than him.

Related: WATCH: Bills WR Keon Coleman continues to make great catches at training camp

We’re not implying that Cook should’ve joined San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey in the 99 overall club or been rated in the mid-90s among the likes of Nick Chubb, Derrick Henry, or Saquan Barkey—but 24 players at the position are rated 82 overall or higher. Are there really 24 current NFL running backs who are better than Cook?

There certainly weren’t 24 more productive rushers than him last season. He finished fourth among backs in rushing yards (1,122) and sixth among all players in yards from scrimmage (1,567). His 4.7 rushing yards per attempt was good for seventh among running backs and ninth among all players.

He produced among the league’s elite at his position last season, and though it’d be disingenuous to say that Cook is the same caliber of player as McCaffrey, Henry, or Breece Hall, there are not 24 running backs in the NFL who are more productive—or objectively better—than Cook. The third-year back has the same overall rating as Devin Singletary, a fine running back who tallied 1,091 scrimmage yards in Houston last year; Cook had 476 more scrimmage yards than him. In fact, Cook’s 2022 emergence prompted the Bills to allow Singletary—whom they drafted in the third round of the 2019 NFL Draft—to walk as a free agent in the 2023 offseason.

All of the ratings are generally a bit strange; for example, Los Angeles Rams running back Kyren Williams, who finished third among running backs in rushing yards last season, is an 84 overall, while Isiah Pacheco, who finished 18th in rushing, is an 87. It doesn’t make sense and is generally dumb, which is a statement true of several Madden-centric topics.

Perhaps Cook will crack the mid-80s in next year’s game if he usurps 2,000 scrimmage yards this season. Madden NFL 25 will be available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S next month.

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