It's now been 54 days since Adrian Peterson completed one of the most remarkable running back seasons of all-time. For months, everyone around football marveled about how Peterson bounced back from torn anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments to post 2,097 rushing yards, the second most prolific single-season output in NFL history. Peterson was rewarded for his efforts with the league MVP award. And if that wasn't extraordinary enough, then it was learned earlier this month that Peterson played the final six games of the season with a painful sports hernia. That injury caused the Vikings to significantly cut back on his practice time. In December, for example, Peterson essentially only went through practice on Fridays. And yet in the Vikings' five games in the season's final month, Peterson totaled 861 rushing yards and five touchdowns.
This morning at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis, Vikings head coach Leslie Frazier shared more details on Peterson's injury and reiterated his amazement in the running back's ability to not only play through pain but to continue producing at such a high level. Here is an excerpt from that exchange.
A year ago at this event, you were talking about the need to throttle Adrian back as he was trying to accelerate his recovery timetable and rehab workload. But after what he showed in recovering from an ACL, is something like sports hernia surgery simply like a hangnail for him?
"When he had that injury and we were monitoring in his practices – as you guys remember, we were holding him out And then he'd practice on Friday -- and then he'd go out and play the way he did on Sundays, it was just amazing. ACL? Sports hernia? And to play the way he played? So this surgery, it's like a piece of cake after the ACL and what he was able to accomplish. But he's unique. He's very unique."
When that injury first happened, did you internally wonder if his reps would have to be cut back in games? Because that lingered for a month-and-a-half?
"We did. There were times I'd be telling [running backs coach] James Saxon on the headset, 'Watch him on this carry. See if we have to take him out.' And I'd talk to Adrian on those Fridays when he would get in some practice time and say, 'What do you think?' And he'd say, 'Coach, I'll be ready. I'll be ready.' But I couldn't always tell if he was going to be ready. And then you'd go through warm-ups in pregame and it was like, man, it looks like he's going to be OK. But in the back of your mind you're just wondering can he finish. And then he'd break a long run and you're like, 'He's different.'"
So the only game where it held him back was Houston?
"That was probably the game that it bothered him the worst. That game. You probably saw him grabbing (the injury) in that ballgame. That's when I remember telling our coaches, 'That's it for him.' And we pulled him in that ballgame. That game was the worst."
