Dalvin Cook will meet with the Colts tonight at the NFL Combine

Each NFL team gets to interview 60 prospects during the NFL Combine week, which means that teams will have to narrow down their requests from a couple hundred players to 60 formal interviews. These interviews are only short 15 minute segments, but they can prove very valuable.

One player the Colts will meet with this week should surprise absolutely no one: Florida State running back Dalvin Cook. According to the Indianapolis Star’s Stephen Holder, Cook will meet with the Colts tonight.

Here’s why the Colts meeting with Cook should have been absolutely expected: he’s a very talented young running back and the Colts could really use him, but he also has had some off-the-field trouble and character concerns as well. That is enough to give some scouts and teams pause as they determine whether Cook is worth their first round pick, so I’d expect Cook will be meeting with most of the teams in the league this week at the Combine. It gives teams, like the Colts, the chance to actually talk with Cook about some of the concerns they might have. To be honest, it would be a huge surprise if the Colts didn’t talk with Cook at the Combine.

Of course, some will see this as confirmation of the Colts’ interest in Cook - seeing as he’s been a very common pick for the team in the first round of mock drafts. There’s certainly an element of truth to that, and that’s because Cook would be a very good addition to this Colts team. For a team needing a running back, to not interview a guy like Cook to get the chance to talk with a very talented prospect about some of the concerns teams may have would be ignoring their responsibility and not doing their due diligence.

One thing that seems pretty certain, though, is that we’ll continue to hear a lot of talk about whether the Colts and Cook would be a good first round fit right up until the draft.