Minnesota Vikings vs. 49ers: Four areas of concern
By Dan Zinski
September 14, 2015; Santa Clara, CA, USA; Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson (28) runs with the football against San Francisco 49ers strong safety Antoine Bethea (41) during the second quarter at Levi
1. Adrian Peterson struggles
It wasn’t the kind of night Adrian Peterson was looking for. Just 31 yards on 10 carries.
Some of Peterson’s struggle was down to lack of push from the offensive line, but some of it was down to him not having much experience in the Vikings’ offense.
Norv Turner has implemented a lot more shotgun looks to make things more comfortable for Teddy Bridgewater. This means Peterson has to line up alongside Bridgewater rather than in his traditional position.
Peterson himself spoke to the challenges posed by running from the shotgun (via 1500ESPN):
"“I felt a little hesitant a couple of times coming out of the shotgun,” Peterson said. “The couple of runs I had, I felt like I could’ve done better. A couple of them were pretty decent. Once I look at the film, I’ll be able to evaluate myself and see the things I could’ve done a lot better.”"
Peterson did have a couple nice receptions running from the shotgun and he did an okay job picking up pass rushers. But it’s obvious that Peterson is nowhere near being comfortable in that formation.
Norv Turner is going to have a decision to make: Does he dial back the shotgun looks to make Peterson more comfortable even if it’s detrimental to Teddy Bridgewater?
There’s no doubt that Bridgewater looks better in the shotgun. His success last year largely came about as a result of Turner tweaking the offense to implement more of those looks. And he seemed far more comfortable in shotgun last night than under center.
It seems to me that, with Bridgewater being a big part of your long-term plans, you have to set things up for him to succeed even if that comes at the expense of Adrian Peterson.
The Vikings gave Peterson a contract that lets both parties re-assess at the end of the 2015 season. I see no reason to hurt Bridgewater’s development just to feed Peterson the football.