What? Adrian Peterson is Overrated?

I found this Posted Oct 16th 2007 10:56AM by Michael David Smith, an AOL writer

http://sports.aol.com/fanhouse/tag/AdrianPeterson/
Filed under: Vikings, Minnesota, Featured Stories, The Word

In case you haven't heard, Vikings running back Adrian Peterson looked pretty good on Sunday against the Bears. All he did was finish Sunday's win over the Bears with 361 total yards and a Vikings record 224 yards rushing.

That performance Sunday has made him the talk of the NFL, and no less an authority than Ron Jaworski says he's already the best runner in the league.

But is it time for us to slow down just a little bit and look at things objectively? For starters, let's remember that the Bears defense of 2007 is a far cry from the Bears defense of 2006. Yes, they've got a lot of the same guys in the same uniforms, but the fact is, the Bears have struggled all year -- even the pathetic Packers running game made some big plays against the Bears a week ago. So Peterson's big day didn't come against great opposition.

And then let's remember that most fans only see the highlights, and the highlights don't show the bad plays. Peterson gets stopped at or behind the line of scrimmage quite a bit. He got stopped at the line on four of his carries Sunday and behind the line on four other carries. The Vikings' offensive line deserves plenty of the blame for that, but a running back who fails to pick up a single yard on 40 percent of his carries has some work to do.