VikesCentric: Preparing For Life Without Adrian Peterson

Since he entered the league in 2007, the Minnesota Vikings have formed their offensive game plan around the talents of running back Adrian Peterson. Some years, depending on the rest of the personnel, Adrian is a focal point but the offense can find other ways to be effective. Other years, Peterson has been the entirety of the Vikings offense.

But as we sit here, Saturday morning, There's a very real possibility that the Vikings, Vikings fans and Vikings players will have to start getting used to the idea of playing without Adrian Peterson.

We all know that he'll most likely be suspended for the remainder of the season awaiting his appeal to be heard. Now, after Peterson broke his silence with a phone interview with the USA Today.

While Peterson used the forum to address his issues with corporal punishment and admitting that there are better ways to punish his kids, he also used it to float out an interesting idea.

Buried within the context of Adrian exclaiming how sorry he is and how many different forms of punishment he will now use instead of a switch were a few little nuggets that shouldn't leave Vikings fans feeling super comfortable about his future with the team.

Primarily this quote,

"I would love to go back and play in Minnesota to get a feel and just see if my family still feels comfortable there," Peterson said. "But if there's word out that hey, they might release me, then so be it. I would feel good knowing that I've given everything I had in me."

But what would a Vikings team without Adrian Peterson look like heading into the future? It will be different that's for sure, but is different necessarily a bad thing?

We've been hearing for year that the NFL has transformed into a passing league and the Minnesota Vikings are stuck with an archaic offensive attack focusing on running the football first. Sure it's gotten them to the playoffs a few times, but the one season they went deep, Brett Favre came to town and single handedly transformed the bland attack into a viable aerial threat.

The Vikings haven't exactly been planning for a time this close where they would have to part ways with their star running back, but thankfully, they may have stumbled upon a diamond in the rough with third round running back Jerick McKinnon.

Drafted to add a new element to the Vikings offense, pass catching, and to serve as a change of pace for Adrian's hard-nosed running style, McKinnon has impressed during his fill-in opportunity this season. His patience is that of a crafty veteran and his shiftiness is something that you simply cannot teach a football player. They either have it, or they don't.

With McKinnon filling in, and Norv Turner still at the offensive helm, the Vikings offense then shifts to more of a passing, maybe call it West Coast offense attack. Short passes, allowing your players to make a defender miss a tackle and gain yards after the catch. McKinnon fits that bill well, so do Kyle Rudolph and Cordarrelle Patterson. There's your young core of weapons. Still, the success of this football team will live and die with the progression of quarterback Teddy Bridgewater.

Sure, having Adrian out there would have taken the focus off of the young QB and it would have opened up the field, but then what would have happened to Teddy's progress if and when Adrian were to be cut? He no longer has his noookie-blankey to rely on and all the attention shifts back to him, the quarterback who was christened into the league within a run-first offensive attack.

Throwing Teddy into the fire feet first this season without Adrian should help him prepare better for the type of offense that the Vikings will run with or without Adrian Peterson into the future. It's teaching him how to read pressures, how to adjust formations and how to find the open receiver better than handing the ball off to 28 would have done.

The writing appears to be on the wall spelling the end of Adrian's time here in Minnesota. If it's not this offseason, it will likely be next, but there is a time coming in the not-so-distant future where this football team will play without Peterson in the backfield. As painful as this season has been, with all of the changes and adjustments, it's setting them up to bounce back from this loss faster.