Minnesota Vikings Need to Prepare for Life After Adrian Peterson

On Christmas Eve, the Minnesota Vikings got the biggest lump of coal in a season full of them when Adrian Peterson stayed on the ground after being tackled by Redskins safety DeJon Gomes.

In a game that Peterson arguably shouldn't have even been playing in, Minnesota's biggest nightmare came true.

Peterson suffered a complete tear of his left knee, both the ACL and MCL damaged badly. The only good news was that the PCL was unharmed. Peterson had surgery that completely reconstructed the ACL and repaired the damaged MCL.

His rehabilitation has begun, and whether Peterson's knee will ever be the same depends largely on how much cartilage damage was done.

Here are a couple of discouraging facts for Vikings fans:

Of the top 20 rushers in NFL history, only one, Edgerrin James, had to have extensive reconstructive knee surgery in the prime of his career. Even James' injury wasn't as bad as Peterson's, having torn just his ACL. 

Of all the modern-era running backs in the NFL Hall of Fame, only Gale Sayers suffered as brutal a knee injury as Peterson's. Sayers tore his knee up in his fourth season, and after missing a year, came back to lead the league in rushing for one more year. Still, he clearly wasn't the same runner as before, lacking the speed and cutting ability he'd had before his injury.

As sobering as it is for Vikings fans, the career arc that is most comparable to Peterson's at this point is Terrell Davis. The former Broncos superstar helped lead Denver to a Super Bowl win and was the dominant back in the league during his first four seasons, rushing for 6,413 yards and 56 touchdowns. Through five seasons with the Vikings, Peterson has rushed for 6,752 yards and 64 touchdowns.

In the fourth game of the 1999 season, Davis tore both his ACL and MCL, and although he played in parts of three more seasons, he was a mere shell of his former self, another of the countless great running backs who have had their careers cut short by knee injuries.

On the positive side of things, there is no doubt that medical science has come so far in the decade since Davis' injury that it's almost silly to compare them. Both the surgical procedures and rehabilitative processes are improved to a nearly infinite degree.

Best-case scenario for Peterson and the Vikings is that he can follow a similar path as New England's Wes Welker, who suffered a very similar injury at the end of the 2010 season and was back playing at full strength just eight-and-a-half months later.

Welker seems to be running and cutting just as effectively now as he was before the injury, leading the NFL in receptions this past year. 

Though Welker is not a running back and his knees are not quite as crucial to the way he plays football than Peterson's are to him, there are examples over the last decade of backs coming back from severe knee injuries to play well again, most notably Jamal Lewis and Willis McGahee.

Having said that, nobody would compare Peterson's running style to either of those two, who, while they share Peterson's power, certainly never had Peterson's moves or cutback ability.

Only time will tell how well Peterson bounces back, but nobody doubts how hard he'll work to regain his strength.

Unfortunately, history shows us that running backs like Peterson simply don't return as the player they were pre-injury. Their ability to cut and put moves on, what makes them electric and different, just isn't there anymore.

On the positive side of things for the Vikings, it's becoming more and more obvious that having a great running back is no longer important in trying to win games in the modern NFL. 

With all of the rule changes that benefit both quarterbacks and receivers like never before, having a great running game is almost the equivalent of having a starting pitcher who can go nine innings. It just doesn't matter anymore. 

Look, anyone who loves football loves Adrian Peterson. Watching Peterson explode through the line of scrimmage and make tacklers look stupid in the open field is as good as it gets for a football fan.

But the way the game is played now, having a player like Peterson just isn't as important to winning as it used to be.

The New York Giants just won the Super Bowl, and they finished the regular season dead last in the league in rushing. They beat the Patriots, who were 20th in the league on the ground.

None of the last four Super Bowl Champions have had a 1,000-yard rusher on their team. The last team to win a Super Bowl with a dominant running back was the Patriots with Corey Dillon eight years ago.

What happened?

The rules have changed. Kids start going to seven-on-seven passing camps in seventh grade nowadays. The glamor players in the NFL over the last decade have mostly been quarterbacks and receivers.

Every Minnesota Vikings fan hopes Adrian Peterson can buck the odds and be back on the field, as good as new, come next fall.

The truth is, however, that for the Vikings to become a contender again, it's far more important that they get a whole lot better at quarterback and receiver.