Adrian Peterson has earned Eric Dickerson’s admiration. But that does not mean the Hall of Fame running back wants or even believes the phenomenal Minnesota Vikings running back will break his single-season rushing record.
Truth be told, Dickerson would rather maintain his place in the NFL record annals.
”He’s a phenomenal player and seems like a good dude,” Dickerson said of Peterson to CBSsports.com last week. ”If a player was to break it, I’d probably want it to be Adrian. But I like having the record. I don’t think it’s going to be broken.”
Peterson enters the final two weekends of the season with 1,811 yards – 294 to set the record Dickerson accomplished in 1984. Great numbers for a regular season. Out-of-this world considering that Peterson suffered a torn ACL last Christmas eve
”It’s something that I’m not focusing on, it’s in the back of my mind, but I want to accomplish that,” Peterson said of the record after Sunday’s game during which he rushed for 212 yards against Sat. Louis.. ”I want to let the chips fall where they may. I look at today’s game, I could have had 300 (yards), but it wasn’t meant to happen. We got the ‘W,’ we got closer. Let’s move on.”
In the last three weeks, Peterson is averaging more than 164 yards per game over the last eight and is averaging more yards per carry (6.3) than Christian Ponder is per pass attempt (5.95).
”Nobody probably has ever done it better than he’s doing it in this stretch,” Texans coach Gary Kubiak said.
”It’s mental. My mindset, my willpower, my determination,” Peterson said. ”And that’s something people don’t see, is how hard I work during the off-season. I grind hard. When you want to be great – and in my mind, I want to be the greatest that ever played – you can’t talk about it, you have to go out and work.”
Vikings quarterback Chris Ponder added: ”We obviously want him to get it, and he’s chugging along. He’s getting yards and I don’t think it’s something we’re thinking about and trying to take advantage of. We do want to make the playoffs and that’s our number one goal and (to) keep winning. The way he’s playing, we hope he gets it. He’s getting close.”
