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Normally Adrian Peterson’s absence from Minnesota Vikings‘ OTAs would not be news, but any story attached to him grabs attention at this point with what has gone on over the past nine months. Since it surfaced he would not be at voluntary offseason work this week, two reports from over the holiday weekend have taken things a bit further regarding Peterson. Charles Robinson of Yahoo! reported Peterson still wants to be traded, and Bleacher Report’s Jason Cole reported that agent Ben Dogra hinted at a holdout via text message on Monday.
The Vikings have remained united and steadfast, at least publicly, that they intend to keep Peterson. He will forfeit a $250,000 bonus by sitting out all offseason activities before training camp, but the Vikings would still be on the hook for his $12.75 million base salary if he’s on the team. No other team would be willing to pay a running back that played one game last season that kind of money, which leaves aside that Peterson is now 30 years old with a fairly significant injury history.
Jason La Canfora of CBS Sports.com is the latest national reporter to weigh in on the situation with the Vikings and Peterson, but he added the potential that Peterson could consider retiring if something doesn’t change. There has been talk that Peterson would like more guaranteed money put into the remainder of his contract, but that would be a bad move for the Vikings and is an unlikely scenario. But an even more unlikely scenario is Peterson retiring before the 2015 season, since he is simply too vain to leave numbers on the table.
If he never plays another game, Peterson will go down as one of the best running backs in NFL history. He is keenly aware of his legacy too, and he surely wants his final career numbers to reflect his status as an all-time great.
Peterson’s 10,190 career rushing yards puts him 28th in league history right now, and another season with over 1,000 yards would put him in the top-20. All-time leading rusher Emmitt Smith finished with 18,355 career yards, while playing through his age-35 season (2004). Peterson’s age-35 season would be 2020, but I see it as very unlikely he plays that long.
Peterson’s current contract runs through 2017, but for argument sake let’s say he plays two seasons beyond that and plays five more seasons. Leaving aside his lone game last season, when he had 75 rushing yards, Peterson averaged 98.2 yards per game from 2007-2013. Assuming he plays all 16 games over the next five seasons, which is a huge assumption since he only did that once in the four seasons prior to 2014, Peterson would rush for 7,856 rushing yards over that span. That looks like a long-term best-case scenario, and Peterson would then be second all-time with 18,046 career rushing yards.
When he spoke to ESPN.com’s Ben Goessling last December, Peterson lamented how his situation was being handled by the league and hinted at retirement. I supported a possible decision by Peterson to retire at that time, and a part of me would not miss him. But I think Peterson absolutely knows what he needs to do to climb each rung on the NFL’s all-time rushing list, in small and big steps, and his ego won’t allow him to call it a career when he believes he still has something to offer.
I can see Peterson trying to call the Vikings’ bluff by not joining his teammates until training camp in late July, and that looks likely to me since the $250,000 workout bonus is a drop in the bucket for him. I still see a quick decline in production coming for Peterson, but that does not necessarily mean he will, or even should, retire before the coming season.
I think Peterson truly wants to play elsewhere, and I’ve consistently supported the idea of trading him from the Vikings’ perspective. But I think Peterson would rather be a disgruntled Viking during the 2015 season and not retire quite yet, especially when the alternative is leaving statistics on the table.
Brad Berreman is a Senior Writer at Rant Sports.com. Follow him on Twitter.
