AP to the Cardinals

The once star running back, Adrian Peterson, gets a second chance on his season. AP, as of Tuesday, has been traded from the New Orleans Saints to the Arizona Cardinals for a conditional draft pick. He will take over the starting running back role with the Arizona Cardinals and is expected to be the primary option Sunday against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.     

The trade comes to no surprise since Peterson’s role in the Saints offense was minimal to say the least.  Peterson started just one game in his four game stay with the Saints, and in these four games he only recorded 81 yards on 27 carries.  This production put Peterson on track to have his career low total yards for a season. Despite this poor start from AP, the Cardinals have been desperate for a rushing attack ever since week one when David Johnson was put on IR for a dislocated left wrist. The loss of Johnson has made the Cardinals the worst running team in the NFL with a shocking 51.8 yards per game. Their leading rusher Chris Johnson is averaging about 2.5 yards per carry, so bringing in AP is an attempt to bring back any type of ground attack offense the Cardinals were used to having with David Johnson in the backfield.  

Peterson is also accustomed to being the workhorse for his respective team, like David Johnson was, so when he saw little to no carries in New Orleans he constantly butted heads with the head coach, Sean Payton. So this trade is exactly what Peterson wanted, and needed, to make a statement for his abilities as a running back. There’s no question his age has shown this season so far, but his heart is still in the game as he said, “I have a lot left in the tank. Stay tuned. Stay tuned and you guys will be able to see that firsthand.”  This is a promising statement coming from a great athlete, so I wouldn’t count out AP for the rest of this season, but we will see Sunday if he really does still have that juice left in the tank.   

Written by Brett Clark