Adrian Peterson often describes his running style as "famine, famine, feast," meaning he might get a yard here, lose a yard there and then dart 80 yards for a touchdown. Last season, it seemed as if there was a lot of famine when it came to the carries by the Vikings running back.

That's where our friends at ProFootballFocus.com enter the picture. The folks at this site produce NFL statistics and player gradings by watching every game on a play-by-play basis. Among the things they tracked was how many carries for zero or no yards each running back had in 2009.

Turns out Peterson wasn't in the top-five but he did finish in the top-10 in the league in this category.

According to ProFootballFocus, Peterson had 87 rushing attempts (out of 365 in the regular season and playoffs) on which he gained no yards or lost yardage. That meant 23.8 percent of the time Peterson had these types of runs, the ninth most (or worst) in the NFL.

Interestingly, the player who had the fourth-most carries for no yards or a loss of yards was Peterson's backup, former Viking Chester Taylor. Taylor gained no yards or lost yards on 26.2 percent of his attempts. ProFootballFocus has Taylor with 27 such carries on 103 carries.

Atop the list was Indianapolis' Donald Brown, who was at 29.8 percent (28 carries of no yards or lost yardage of 94 attempts). Houston's Steve Slaton was No. 2 (29 percent); San Francisco's Glen Coffee was No. 3 (26.5 percent); and the Giants' Ahmad Bradshaw was No. 5 (25.2 percent).

The rest of the top 10: Atlanta's Jerious Norwood (25 percent); Detroit's Kevin Smith (24 percent); Denver's Knowshon Moreno (23.9 percent); Peterson; and Tampa Bay's Derrick Ward (23.5 percent).