Even though he turned 31 this offseason, Vikings running back Adrian Peterson has said he thinks he has plenty of good seasons left in him. Unfortunately, Peterson isn’t sure how many good offseasons he has left in him.
Peterson told ESPN that he doesn’t mind putting in the hard work, but he gets sick of the offseason grind and isn’t sure how many more of them he wants to go through.
“That’s it,” Peterson said. “Training camp, going through the grind, OTAs and all that -- that will definitely be the deciding factor. Physically, body-wise, I’ll be good. It’s just mentally -- like with OTAs, I’m out there practicing, I’m going, I’m putting in work. But it’s so repetitive that it’s more suited toward the young guys and getting them into the system. It gets kind of boring.”
Peterson noted that his best season in the NFL was in 2012, when he didn’t have to go through the offseason grind because his entire offseason was devoted to rehabbing the torn ACL he suffered at the end of the 2011 season.
“Think about this: The 2012 season [after recovering from ACL surgery], I didn’t do any training camp,” Peterson said. “But I was over there on the side, working out. You get that extra month of working out? Come on, man. I would much rather not participate in training camp and work out, just to have more of an edge. Training camp, you’re going out there, you’re playing football, you’re going to lift, and after that, you don’t want to do anything. You’re tired, from meetings and all that.”
Peterson told PFT Live last month that he doesn’t like training camp, and he sounds like a man who would like to be excused from a lot of the summer work that players usually do. He makes a good case -- a case Mike Zimmer should consider.