Adrian Peterson and Norv Turner are both dinosaurs

Adrian Peterson and Norv Turner are both hold-overs from a seemingly bygone offensive era.

One epitomizes the bell-cow I-formation power running back, while the other is today’s foremost proponent of old-fashioned run-it-and-go-play-action offense.

Adrian Peterson and Norv Turner ought to get along pretty well as both are throwbacks.

Peterson and Turner both in their own way typify a brand of football that has largely been abandoned in today’s NFL.

Nowadays for running backs it’s not about being Superman, it’s about being a cog in the machine. Conventional wisdom tells us you don’t draft a running back high and pay him a ton of money to run the ball 20 times every game.

Nowadays you pick up a decent back in the second or third round and plug him in. Ideally you want a back who can catch the ball and block.

You don’t want Adrian Peterson, who excels at old-fashioned smash-mouth running but struggles in shotgun-spread formations. And also eats up a big chunk of your salary cap.

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Peterson keeps putting up big numbers every year, but every year his performance receives a lower-and-lower grade from Pro Football Focus.

Peterson might as well be a dinosaur. You could say the same thing about Norv Turner.

In the ’90s, Turner’s Dallas Cowboys offenses were state-of-the-art. It was simple. Run the ball a lot with Emmit Smith behind your dominating offensive line, then try for big plays down the field from Troy Aikman to Michael Irvin, Alvin Harper, et al.

The years have not been kind to Norv Turner’s approach, a derivation of the vaunted Air Coryell offense of the ’70s.

Last year Turner was roundly criticized for being too predictable in his playcalling, for using Adrian Peterson in the shotgun when he had Jerick McKinnon on his bench.

He was hammered for forcing Teddy Bridgewater to do things he’s not good at, like throw downfield. Some even took him to task for relegating Cordarrelle Patterson to afterthought status.

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Many wondered if Norv might be outright dumped in 2016, but in the end he survived. The Vikings did however bring in Pat Shurmur to provide input into the offense.

Unlike Turner, Shurmur is well-versed in West Coast offense, and spread and up-tempo philosophies.

The hope is that Turner and his staff can cobble together an offense that both takes advantage of Adrian Peterson and gives Teddy Bridgewater more chance to operate.

In other words, the hope is that both Turner and Peterson will evolve. But you know what happened to the dinosaurs. They didn’t evolve, they went extinct.