Despite Injury, Leslie Frazier Believes Adrian Peterson Will Be Ready For Vikings in Week 1 Next Season

Published: 26^th Dec 11 9:12 am

by Dan Parzych
Director of Content

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Despite Injury, Leslie Frazier Believes Adrian Peterson Will Be Ready For Vikings in Week 1 Next Season

(Geoff Burke/US PRESSWIRE)

There’s nothing worse than having one of your star players suffer a severe injury at the end of the regular season–which is exactly what happened to the Minnesota Vikings on Saturday when running back Adrian Peterson tore his ACL against the Washington Redskins. While the timing of the injury is terrible considering there’s only one week left in the regular season, that doesn’t mean Peterson won’t be ready for the start of the 2012 season.

According to a Peter King of Sports Illustrated, Vikings head coach Leslie Frazier discussed on Sunday how he believes his star running back will still be ready to go for Week 1 of the 2012 season, despite this latest injury. Usually, these types of injures take about 8-10 months to recover from, but Frazier believes Peterson has the type of work ethic in which he can recover quicker than expected–just like New England Patriots wide receiver Wes Welker did when he suffered the same injury during the regular-season finale back in the 2009 season.

From King’s article:

“Wes Welker’s rare,” Vikings coach Leslie Frazier told me Sunday. “But I talked to Adrian on the plane on the way home last night. He’s down, of course. But he will attack his rehab viciously. He is such a strong-minded guy. We won’t know everything about the damage until the surgery is done, but we think if everything goes perfectly, Adrian will be back to play at the start of next season. I think he’ll turn out to be one of those case studies people look at when they want to see how a guy rehabbed to come back strong.” Carroll made an interesting point about the rehab. “There’s no reason to believe Peterson won’t be able to come back at or near the same level,” Carroll said via email. “The biggest issue will be confidence. Peterson will have to believe in his knee the way he did on every step before that last one Saturday. That’s the biggest issue, but one I believe he can overcome.”

For Peterson’s sake, let’s hope Frazier is right and his running back is healthy enough to play in Week 1 next year–especially with the way things have gone for the Vikings this season. 2011 has been nothing but a disappointment for Minnesota as they’ve won just three games heading into Week 17 and Peterson is clearly the most valuable player on the team–so they’ll certainly need him if there’s any chance of this team bouncing back in 2012.

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