Adrian Peterson is a monster! I was one of those people who said he should not have been a top pick because his upright running style would make him too easy to bring down in the NFL, where he would not physically outclass opposing defenders like he did in college.
He can outclass the 2008 Green Bay Packers defense as much as those Big 12 defenses he faced. There is no delicate way to put this: The Packers' run defense stinks.
The Minnesota Vikings ran the ball 41 times and gained 220 yards on the ground against them Sunday. Peterson accounted for 192 yards on 30 carries, a 6.4 yard average.
On the bright side, the Packers held a pretty good back in Chester Taylor to 29 yards on 10 carries. They also stopped Peterson on a key fourth-down play.
The pass defense was stellar, exposing Gus Frerotte for the journeyman backup he really is. He was 15-28 for 151 yards and a touchdown, but he also threw three picks, including one returned for a touchdown. Moreover, that 47-yard touchdown came when Taylor broke a tackle on a short pass by backup middle linebacker Desmond Bishop and was gone.
Bishop also had an inexcusable unnecessary-roughness penalty later in the game, and the Packers lost this game as much because of penalties as failure to stop Peterson. When you are playing your ninth game of the season, the reliance on young backups is no longer an excuse: Coach Mike McCarthy needs to shoulder the blame for this frequent problem.
He also channeled Mike McCarthy or Mike Nolan in making his first replay challenge of the year.
Adrian Peterson ran for a 29-yard touchdown to give the Vikings the eventual final margin, 28-27, with 2:22 to play. While it looked like the Packers may have stopped Peterson as much as a foot short (replays were inconclusive), there was no way they would stop him on a first and goal from there.
Winning that challenge would only have allowed the Vikings to run more time the Packers needed to answer with a field goal. Losing it cost the Packers a timeout that might have been useful to drive a bit further. Mason Crosby missed the 52-yard field goal wide right in the closing seconds.
There were a lot of coaching blunders on both sides of the ball.
The Vikings
Minnesota was running at will and near a score, but Brad Childress elected to pass twice in a row to kill his drive. The fourth-down play came after a timeout, allowing the Packers defense to catch its breath and was on the Vikings' side of the field, making for an easy scoring drive for the Packers.
McCarthy almost did not run the ball at all in the first half (nine times), allowing the formidable pass rush of the Vikings to key on Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers was sacked four times and hit after many of his throws. When the Packers did run the ball, it went quite well: Ryan Grant finished with 75 yards on just 16 carries, a 4.7 yard average.
The Vikings also recorded two safeties, although on one of them, Rodgers was called for an illegal forward pass from the end zone. Someone will have to explain what was illegal about it; I wonder if they realized after throwing the flag for intentional grounding that there was a receiver in the area and just changed the call.
Not having those two points would have forced the Vikings to give the ball to Peterson for the two-point conversion (notice I am not even suggesting he wouldn't have made it) and take the game to overtime.
But then, with the way the Packers were worn down, if they didn't win the toss, they would have lost just like they did last week against the Titans.
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