This is from today's MMQB. Not much about the Rams. Click the link to read the whole article. The format's been changed and everything is now on one page.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/07/27/training-camp-minnesota-vikings-adrian-peterson
The Viking Returns
On Sunday, all eyes were on Adrian Peterson. As the Vikings became the first NFL team to open training camp, Peterson talked to The MMQB about getting back on the field, what he learned during his suspension and why he thinks he’ll have rare longevity in the NFL.
By Peter King
At the first training camp practice of the 2015 NFL season, The MMQB's Peter King caught up with returning Minnesota Vikings RB Adrian Peterson.
MANKATO, Minn.— It was a broiler Sunday in the upper Midwest, 85 with a scorching sun and St. Louis-like humidity that made fans and media at the Vikings’ first day of training camp look for any sliver of shade they could find. Players and coaches, well, they weren’t so lucky. Players wore no pads, but they had helmets, and after drills and short spurts of teaching, they’d remove their helmets and rivulets of sweat would pour off their heads.
On one such occasion, during a break in practice, Adrian Peterson, back after a season in self-imposed purgatory, took a water bottle from a camp aide. Before taking a drink himself, he held up the bottle to undrafted Boise State rookie fullback Blake Renaud. Renaud nodded, and Peterson squirted water in Renaud’s mouth for two or three seconds.
Then Peterson took some water himself. Just a bit of common football courtesy his teammates have gotten used to. “A great teammate,” quarterback Teddy Bridgewater said of Peterson. “I can tell you, the whole locker room’s glad to have him back.”
Pretty good player too. It is silly to judge anything of a veteran football player in an unpadded July practice … except athleticism. And in the first training-camp practice of his thirties (he turned 30 on March 21), Peterson made one move that showed the Vikings the athleticism they were missing at the position for the final 15 games of last season.
Running a seam route out of the backfield on linebacker Brian Peters, Peterson feigned left-right-left in a millisecond and left Peters covering air. Backup quarterback Mike Kafka tossed an in-stride 30-yard touchdown to Peterson. Easy as pie. Followed by a smile. We’ve seen both—the juking move leaving a defender behind, and the smile—before.
“I don’t see the end,” a relaxed Peterson said Sunday. “Straight up and honest with you, I feel like, and I don’t know if I’ll do this, because I feel like once my mind tells me,
You know what—I’m not loving this game anymore, I’ll walk away whenever that time is. But I honestly feel I can play this game until I am 36 or 37 years old. And at a high level.”
Photo by Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
“I’m just glad we got to this day,” GM Rick Spielman said Sunday morning, as the Vikings came out for their first walk-through practice of the summer. “It puts an end to the saga, and we’re all so glad he’s here.”
Early in the off-season, I thought Peterson had played his last game with the Vikings. He inferred he wanted out. His agent, Ben Dogra, made it clear he was trying to get Peterson a fresh start somewhere else. After being put on the Commissioner’s Exempt List—a paid 15-game vacation from football—for most of last season when he was investigated for whipping his four-year-old son excessively with a tree branch, drawing blood, Peterson entered 2015 with an uncertain future. Even after being reinstated to football in April, the question was:
Reinstated to which team? Where would he play?
Only one thing Peterson said in an interview after the morning walk-through here surprised me. That was this: He was sure he’d never be traded all along.
“The reality, and just to be straightforward with you … I knew I really wasn’t going anywhere,” Peterson said. “I am the type of person that likes to look at things from different views, so I put myself in the Vikings situation—the owners, the head coach.
We’re not gonna let you go. I revert back to the Percy Harvin situation. Me, if I was the owner of the Vikings, there’s no way I would have let him go. But unfortunately for us, he ended up leaving—but that’s the way I would have looked at it.
“More importantly, my situation with the Vikings is we’re like family. I’ve been around the people in the building for eight years. Brian Robison, we came in together and he’s still here. Chad Greenway … Those are the guys I love and care about and go out and bust my butt and for and give 100% for because they deserve it and I know I will get the same thing back from them. That’s what makes me happy.”
So no bitter aftertaste about staying?
“No,” he said. “I like being here. “ … I’m in a good place. I have a beautiful wife and a beautiful family … I am really happy to be back with the Minnesota Vikings and to really get this season going.”
One of the reasons he’s here is the approach GM Rick Spielman and coach Mike Zimmer took with the situation. They never opened the door an inch for Peterson to ever give him the thought that he might not play in Minnesota. Spielman made it clear to me Sunday, “Our goal all along was to have Adrian Peterson retire a Viking. I can’t imagine him wearing another uniform, and our whole focus in the offseason was making sure we could get him to stay.”
Said Zimmer: “I think Adrian felt a little bit abandoned at first. But we felt we had to go play without him, and we didn’t have much choice in the matter, obviously. I made one mistake in the process. I said it’s a two-way street, and we want him to be here. People took it like,
If he doesn’t want to be here, maybe we’d let him go.That was never the case. We never wavered in wanting him here. He’s done a lot for this city, for this state, for these fans.”
I made this point to Zimmer—even if the Vikings were able to get a low first-round pick for Peterson (dubious, given what he was owed on the last three years of his contract), how could they have gotten close to equal value for him? Say the Vikings wanted a running back.
The two big-timers were gone in the first half of the first round—
Todd Gurley to the Rams at 10, Melvin Gordon to San Diego at 15. Minnesota, if it picked a back to replace Peterson, might have been left with an Ameer Abdullah. Or Duke Johnson. And what pressure there would have been on that guy at this camp.
“Adrian’s just not a one,” Zimmer said. “He’s a Hall of Fame running who’s loved in this locker room. He’s happy now, and he’s ready to go. I’ve talked to him. I’m confident he’s in a good place with being here.”
“He’s a top 10 player in this league,” said offensive coordinator Norv Turner. “He will win games for us. He’ll be huge for us.”
Photo by Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
It struck me talking to people around the Vikings Sunday that Turner is a big reason why Peterson seems happy he’s here. Going back to his Emmitt Smith days as offensive coordinator in Dallas, Turner has always fed his running backs aggressively. “He’s proven in what he does,” Peterson said. “I was super excited about getting into his offense last year and now I finally get that opportunity.
When my number is dialed up, I am going to go out there and do what I can do. has been so versatile offensively that it is hard for a defense to defend this type of offense. I’m sure he’s excited to have one weapon—well, two more weapons, with the addition of Mike Wallace—added back to our mix.”
Peterson did not want to discuss the events that forced him to sit a season. So no talk from him about the charges of child endangerment stemming from whipping his son. I would have liked to hear his version of events, and how it changed him, or if it did. I did ask if he learned any lesson from the last year of his life.
“The most important thing I’ve learned—I knew this but this was a clear indication to realize it and stick by it—was to put your trust in God and not in man,” Peterson said. “Man will turn his back on you quick and God won’t, no matter what the situation is.”
One more football issue: turning 30. That’s always been the line of demarcation, the time when so many running backs have begun to fall off a cliff because of years of beating on their legs and shoulders and feet. Peterson, as he mentioned earlier, isn’t buying it.
“The saying that age is just a number is so true,” he said. “It's all about how you take care of your body and how you view your age. I am a big believer in speaking things into existence and how words carry true power. So for me, I'm always telling people,
Yeah, I'm getting younger, I'm getting younger.
Taking care of your body is the most important thing, training right and eating right, and your body will take care of you. I hear people all the time say to me,
Man you’re like 22 or 21, and here I am, 30. It’s about taking care of your body and putting the right things in your body.”
Even if Peterson has two great years left and only two, that takes the Vikings through what should be a contending season this year and then a Super Bowl-hosting season with a new stadium next year. The franchise needs a billboard, and he’s it. The crowd was supportive of Peterson Sunday. He was cheered and asked for his autograph and made to feel welcome.
But walking out for a morning walk-through practice, and during the afternoon practice, there weren’t the roars of cheers for him that you might have expected. As one fan said while I walked in Mankato after lunch: “We all want him to have a great year, but there’s a lot of people uncomfortable with the whole story. I think they’ll come around. It might take a while. But he’s always been so good to the fans I think he’ll be loved again.”
We’ll see. The team certainly seemed to be back in love with him Sunday.
