Adrian Peterson’s first season outside of Minnesota is already over
By Adam Patrick
The former Minnesota Vikings running back has been put on injured reserve by the Arizona Cardinals, ending his 2017 season with three games left.
After playing in all of his first 10 NFL seasons with the same team, 2017 was the first time in Adrian Peterson’s career that the running back stepped onto a field while not wearing a Minnesota Vikings uniform.
Currently a member of the Arizona Cardinals, it appears that Peterson’s season has ended a bit early as the team will reportedly place the running back on injured reserve with a neck injury.
Cardinals placing RB Adrian Peterson on IR with a neck injury, per source. Peterson’s season is over.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) December 15, 2017
It definitely was not the most productive season for Peterson, but it was still pretty eventful. After beginning the year as a member of the New Orleans Saints and getting stuffed by his former team in Week 1 (and delivering a killer stare down to Saints head coach Sean Payton), Peterson and his 32-year-old body were shipped off to the Cardinals after just four games with New Orleans.
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The former Vikings running back looked like his old self in his first action with Arizona, rushing for 134 yards and two touchdowns to lead the Cardinals to a Week 6 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Two games later, Peterson was back at it again, gaining 159 rushing yards on 37 carries and helping Arizona to another win, this time over the San Francisco 49ers.
However, his impressive production for the Cardinals would be short lived as the running back only racked up a total of 134 yards on the ground during his next three games.
After Arizona’s Week 12 matchup with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Peterson began to sit out a bunch of practices due to a neck injury. It has never been an injury that was thought of as anything severe, but it was bad enough to keep him off the field for the past two weeks and now end his season with three games still left to be played.
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Peterson is under contract with the Cardinals for 2018 at the fair price of $3.5 million. But it also would not cost Arizona a single penny to release him this offseason if the team decided to head in a different direction.