We recently heard a rumor that there are some people out there who are not fully convinced that Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson is a beast, so we have decided to share with you a bit more evidence. According to ESPN.com, Peterson won the NFL rushing title and chased Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record this past season while playing through a sports hernia.
Peterson reportedly sustained the injury during a Week 10 game against the Detroit Lions. From that point forward, he rushed for 1,068 yards and had two 200-yard games and one 199-yard game. He received a cortisone shot prior to the Week 13 game against the Green Bay Packers, but the Vikings bruiser said it wasn’t until Week 16 that it really started to take its toll.
“Against Houston, that was probably the worse I felt,” Peterson explained. “That was the first time that I really doubted myself and questioned whether I would be able to continue the season. The pain was a 10 on a scale of 10. Put it like this, I developed a new respect for Greg Jennings who had the same type of injury. Initially I thought Greg was tripping and that he needed to be playing, but when I got it I was like, I understand bro. This is nothing to fool with.”
Peterson says the injury got worse and worse each week. Since he fell just nine yards short of breaking Dickerson’s record, does that mean he would have broken it had it not been for the hernia? AP wasn’t willing to go that far, but he certainly feels it affected his play.
“It definitely impacted my play,” he said. “I wasn’t 100 percent, but I wanted to win a championship. I wasn’t going to stop or quit. I made a decision to keep going. I don’t want to make it seem like the sports hernia made me miss (the record). I could have done it with the injury. All I can say is that I would have had better performances.”
The surgeon who performed the procedure on Peterson’s knee recently said AP could be even better next season. Couple that with a full recovery from a sports hernia and Dickerson could be in even more trouble than we initially thought.
