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Ultimately, Peterson received the highest individual recognition, the NFL MVP Award, over Peyton Manning. Based on Derrick Henry in 2020 and Saquon Barkley in 2024 reaching 2,000 rushing yards without getting any first-place consideration in MVP voting, another back winning feels like a longshot.

Even if someone does, it's going to be mightily different.

"I never really had to experience the 'Adrian looks you up and down and goes right through your face situation,' which I'm thankful for," said Vikings safety Harrison Smith, who will join Peterson one day in the Ring of Honor, and likely in Canton. "I watched it a lot, for a lot of years, and I could feel it in practice.

"All the older guys told me, 'Watch out for him.' And I was like, 'What are you talking about?' And he would run right at you," Smith, a rookie when Adrian won MVP, added. "You could feel the force and the speed, and he wanted the physicality of it even in practice — and you'd have to, like, get out of his way almost. I'll always remember you could feel him differently than other people, as far as his intentions."

Although Peterson never got so close again to running past Dickerson, he did claim a third NFL rushing title and is the only 21^st Century player with three crowns (2008, 2012 and 2015). He's also the single-game king, with his tally of 296 yards in his eighth career game holding firm as the gold standard for a rusher — no one since 2010 has come within 40 yards of the total Peterson posted as a 22-year-old Viking.

While many fathers are biased, Peterson's is honest.

"I would say it's a toss-up between Adrian and Barry Sanders as the best running backs in NFL history," Nelson shared, noting both competed in the Black and Blue Division and often overcame stacked boxes. "I would take a coin. I would have Purple on one side and Honolulu Blue on the other side, and I'd flip it."

In fairness, people will debate the greatest of all-time forever.

But no one should ever debate Adrian Peterson's football prowess.

'One of THOSE guys'

Bobby Wade did his old teammates a solid and gave them a heads-up in mid-October of 2007.

"In the conversations throughout the week, it's like, 'Good luck tackling this dude,' " Wade laughed.

During his first season in Minnesota and first game on the other side of the Vikings-Bears rivalry, Wade communicated with Pro Bowl linebackers Lance Briggs and Brian Urlacher. He played with Briggs at the University of Arizona and with both of them when he was drafted by Chicago in the fifth round in 2003.

The Bears 'backers were on alert, and respected Peterson after Wade's warning, but no amount of reverence prepared them for the rookie who refused to be tackled 19 years ago on this date, Oct. 14.

"That game, he was on fire," Nelson smiled, adding that he was particularly excited for it and told a couple of Sooners-turned-Bears, Tommie Harris and Dusty Dvoracek. " 'Hey, we finna give it to you guys.' "

Peterson kept his father's word. He scored from 67, 73 and 35 yards and boosted Chester Taylor's 22 carries for 83 yards with 20 of his own for 224. It was Chicago's 1,200^th regular-season game (including 24 as the Decatur Staleys from 1920-21) and Peterson's fifth — and his yardage eclipsed every player, past and since, versus the tied-for-oldest continuously operating club.

Unbelievably, Peterson's peak impact in the Windy City that day occurred in another phase. After Devin Hester rallied the Bears with an 81-yard touchdown catch and knotted the game at 31-all, the young tailback couldn't wait to dig his cleats into the grass. So with 1:38 to play, Peterson proposed a solution.

"I remember him coming up to Coach [Brad] Childress and the special teams coordinator (Paul Ferraro) and saying, 'Put me in. Put me in. I want this return,' " Jaguars Associate Head Coach Heath Farwell shared. "It was no surprise, no surprise the type of player he was, that he wanted to help the team win."

Peterson returned 16 kickoffs his rookie year, including three earlier in the game at Soldier Field, so his plea wasn't ludicrous, but it was audacious. He wanted the ball in his hands, and the opportunity to polish one of his premier breakouts. And boy, did he — in front of Hester, the baddest returner in history.

"I remember that vividly because he asked for the business," Childress said. "There's not a lot of guys who do, and then he delivered."

Like a natural, Peterson fetched the ball at the Vikings 9 and flared up the field, splitting the hashes straight as an arrow, as if he was racing the 100 meters. The field in front of him disappeared as he blurred to the Bears emblem and then violently juked kicker Robbie Gould, before he was dragged down around the waist by Ricky Manning and stopped from cracking the tie himself. Nevertheless, his 53-yard return was the longest of his career, and it got Ryan Longwell close enough to hit a 55-yard field goal as time expired.

Farwell, an outside linebacker who hung his hat on special teams, shared the field with Peterson as his teammate from 2007-10. He has climbed the coaching ranks post playing career and said that he still can visualize Peterson "just throwing defenders off him, just running down the sidelines and manhandling what were grown men — linebackers and defensive backs — like they were little kids."

That sentiment is a common denominator of Peterson's career from pee-wees through the pros.

"Watching his college stuff was insane, but when he actually got to Minnesota … this dude was unreal, man," said Wade, who led the team in receiving yards in 2007 and ranked second to Bernard Berrian in 2008. "And then being a receiver that really prided myself on my ability to be able to block and wanting to be that guy that was always on the field in run and pass situations — to have a guy like Adrian Peterson that you're blocking for is different because it elevates your want-to. It really makes you want to dive in and figure out how to get it done knowing Adrian's probably going to make that first guy miss."

Former Vikings Offensive Coordinator Darrell Bevell recalled being enamored by Peterson's blend of size and speed in the lead-up to the 2007 draft but wasn't confident other clubs would pass on selecting him.

Fortunately, the event proved to be top-heavy — Hall of Fame talent was picked second (Calvin Johnson), third (Joe Thomas), 11^th (Patrick Willis) and 14^th (Darrelle Revis) — and the board favored the Vikings at 7.

"Obviously, he had all the skill sets that you need, but that's not all the answers when you have all the skills," explained Bevell, who is the Assistant Head Coach of the Panthers. "You have to be dedicated to your craft. You have to be willing to learn. You have to be a hard worker. And he was all of those things."

"There's that special niche, which is, 'Give me the ball, let me run downhill. I might be in the wrong spot as far as formation … our screen game might not be great … catching the football might struggle a little bit, but downhill, this is what I do,' " Wade said of Peterson. "You naturally start to watch that stuff really develop — and you see it — and then you're kind of like, 'OK, this cat is different with the ball in space.' "

Right away, Peterson pressured defenses and took some of the burden off his own.

"As a defensive player, it automatically gives you a sense of peace because you know you're going to be able to establish the run with a guy like that," stated former Vikings defensive end and Peterson's draft classmate Brian Robison. "And from Day 1, it was apparent that that was what it was going to be."

It was never more evident than on Nov. 4, 2007, when Peterson went into the locker room at halftime with 43 yards and departed the Metrodome the same day with 296 and a record that's looked infallible for almost 20 years. In a supercharged style, Peterson went off in a way that doesn't happen nowadays.

The back diced the Chargers with quick strikes like a quarterback, ripping off 11 double-digit-yard runs, including 64- and 46-yard touchdowns. The play sheet that Bevell started with became a cheat sheet in the second half. He said, "I just had this little card. I think it had like three to five plays on it, and I was just Rolodexing through those. I didn't really have to call much else because he was running so well that day."

Robison clocked it as "the most impressive thing that I've ever seen and witnessed on a football field."

Before his Vikings stint, Pro Football Hall of Fame defensive end Jared Allen recalled the Chiefs poring over Peterson's tape against the Bolts to brush up on their rival — and getting a kick out of the absurdness.

"That was, let's put it this way, everybody was trying to replicate that," Allen belly laughed. "We were like, 'OK, well, it's a copycat league, whatever runs they did, we want to do that a hundred times over.'"

Of course, it's a task easier drawn up than done.

"He was just one of those guys, and I would put in capital THOSE because you don't have a lot of guys that can do the things that Adrian did," Robison emphasized. "There's a reason why he's going into the Ring of Honor. There's a reason why he will be a Hall of Famer in Canton, and there's a reason why his name will be remembered not only in Texas and in Oklahoma, but in the NFL for a long time to come."

'Made to play the position'

One of Bevell's favorite stories is about Peterson's politeness.

Here's a player who tilted the Earth when he was in his element, someone opponents circled in 184 different game plans, and a surefire bet to put defenses in a highlight reel that highlighted their frailty.

But outside of the arena, Peterson was forgiving. He didn't chastise the common mistake that new teammates, coaches or people in his professional life repeatedly made. That is, referring to him as 'A.P.'

Eventually, after one meeting, he asked his offensive coordinator, " 'Coach Bev, can you call me A.D.?' "

Bevell was perplexed but accommodating, and the lore of the initials became intertwined with the team.

Nelson Peterson explained the iconic nickname originated as a shorthand for the first two letters of 'Adrian.' It took on greater meaning, though, when Nelson noticed that he couldn't ever stay still. "He's always running around doing things," his father noted. "So I say, 'Boy, you are always moving, All Day.' "

The bottom line is it was a prescient phrase, the perfect moniker for his game. Actually, for virtually every endeavor. People's first impression of Peterson was jarring, even to an established star like Allen.

"The guy's got a death grip, and then you see him in the weight room and on a light day, the guy's squatting 600-plus pounds. Like, my gosh!" Allen exclaimed. "And to be honest, one of the absolute things I remember the most — I knew he was a different animal. I never did OTAs and stuff like that, but I told Brad [Childress] my first year, I'd show up. I was trying to get settled in and get to know [the team]."

Allen's recollection of a conditioning workout in 2008 after Minnesota acquired him in a blockbuster trade is hilariously ridiculous — but it busts any possibility that Peterson's 'All Day' energy was a myth.

"I come in first place with the big guys, you know, doing pretty good, and then I watch Adrian on his fourth 300-yard shuttle. He beat everybody by 25-50 yards. No joke," Allen said. "And then he calls up the team, 'All right, everybody come up.' And I noticed this dude has got a horseshoe, he has just got a lipper in, you know, just completely — I'm like, that dude just ran four 300-yard shuttles with half a puck in his mouth. You know what I mean? Like, this is a different animal, 'OK, wow — this dude's special.' "

From his physique to his play style, Peterson seemingly knew no bounds.

"I thought he looked like a created player, as if you're building this guy on the TV screen," Wade said. "Adrian was no bit short of a Muscle Beach guy. Like, it was crazy when he first walked in. Jawline super strong, stature strong, posture. Obviously, the muscles are put on in all the right spots. And then you shake his hand, and he just wants to crush your hand. And you're like, 'OK!' — that handshake is insane.

"But always smiling, which is something that I always appreciate in guys who are at that level," Wade added. "Especially young guys coming in, you really look for that. You look for guys who love the game."

Wade joked that Peterson was "in there chewing weights, pretty much" during his around-the-calendar training. He was focused on "ensuring his body was in tip-top shape — but always doing it with a smile."

The running back didn't require a pep talk or special attention, either. Peterson was intrinsically motivated to raise his standard and had a knack for returning year after year in impeccable condition.

Farwell recalled one occasion when Peterson dropped his teammates' and staff's jaws despite being absent for the voluntary portion of an offseason, while he followed his regimen close to home in Texas.

"I remember he showed up in the weight room when I was in there, and the head strength coach, Tom Kanavy, was kind of [mad] at him," Farwell said. "Everyone else was working, and he wasn't there, and [Tom] was letting him know that he wasn't impressed by it. And Adrian just looked at him, didn't say a word. He just ran over to the squat rack and started doing pull-ups, and he did 30 and didn't even slow down. He could have done a ton more. He just walked over there, did 30 pull-ups like it was nothing, just to let everyone know, 'Don't worry, I've been working out. I'll be fine.' That's the type of worker he was."

Jerome Felton, who covered Peterson's 12-o'clock during his MVP season, laughed about how he put shin guards in his socks. In the Pro Bowl fullback's eyes, Peterson was "made to play the running back position," and quirks like that were symbolic of his prep and affinity to overpower everyone in his path.

The franchise's longtime left tackle Bryant McKinnie believes Peterson viewed himself "as a machine."

Like many, McKinnie gasped at A.D.'s ability to move his goalposts and awed at him scraping paint off the back of his jersey as he squeezed through crawl spaces and flashed into the second and third levels.

"I would just hustle down the field, but I'm watching him," the 7^th overall pick of 2002 said.

Another bookend who blocked for A.D. for the bulk of his career, Phil Loadholt, paralleled the breeze Peterson created when he ran by his offensive linemen to Brett Favre's passes zipping over the trenches.

Loadholt currently coaches the offensive line at Mississippi State alongside Brandon Fusco, a Vikings sixth-round pick in 2011 out of Slippery Rock. Fusco moved up from blocking 230-pound defensive linemen to the likes of Vince Wilfork and Ndamukong Suh, but the single biggest difference in competition from Division II to the NFL, he said, was speed. And Peterson was the prime representation.

Every now and again, Loadholt and Fusco share cutups of them blocking for Peterson with Bulldogs players. It's an exquisite lesson in the highest level of performance, and the clips get sweeter as they age.

"It still amazes you and wows you, the stuff he used to do," Fusco said.

His 64-yard touchdown at the Browns in Week 1 of his third season — and the first starts for new center/QB combo John Sullivan and Favre — is maybe the finest example. Galloping like a thoroughbred off McKinnie's butt on the left side, Peterson cruised past the first-down marker and put a move on a defender and broke two tackles. At this point, he was near the sideline and throttled down to a standstill in order to swipe another defender off him like he was slamming a sliding door shut. Then, with his head completely turned and facing the offense, Peterson shunned one more and peeled off like a dragster.

"I remember blocking on that play, seeing him fully stop his feet and just give the meanest — I don't even know if you'd call it a stiff arm — it was like a punch, and just fling a defender off him and take that one to the house," Sullivan excitedly recalled. "He's the only running back in the NFL that could do that."

'If you meet force with force'

Peterson has long accepted that adversity is allowed by God to overcome.

When he was young, he read the Book of Job in the Old Testament and learned about the mystery of undeserved suffering. His perception didn't shield him from the pain of deaths or the physical relationship he lost when his father was incarcerated, and the hurt he felt on Christmas Eve in 2011.

Nelson Peterson recalled a feeling of helplessness when Adrian suffered a gruesome knee injury.

"Me and my daughter Nelsha were sitting there in the stands, and she's like, 'Is he OK?' I said, 'No he's not OK.' She said, 'Why do you say that?' I said, 'He doesn't lay on the field.' If Adrian is laying on the field, he is definitely hurt. [If it's] a little bang, a little soreness, he's gonna pop up and keep on playing."

In his initial shock, Peterson beseeched God — Why me? — but when he rebalanced his emotions, his mind shifted to coming back in his strongest form yet. He reminded himself God would not give him more than he could bear, and that the love and fruits of his labor would be multiplied through steadfast commitment.

When Adrian was a boy, Nelson ran a drill where he lined him up a few yards from another kid and instructed him to stay put and take the force of a hit. Then, to show the difference, Nelson had both of them run at each other. The idea was to teach Peterson "if you meet force with force, you'll be all right."

Many years later, Peterson plowed through the adversity he faced with faith-based confidence. His father also was upbeat about an unprecedented recovery after Dr. James Andrews shared his insights.

"They have a window where you can see the whole surgery and they bring the TV up there. So you actually can look inside Adrian's knee while Dr. Andrews is doing the surgery," Nelson said. "And then after the surgery, Dr. Andrews said he'd never seen [the inside of] a football player's knee that had played so much football, that looked like a newborn baby's. So it was destined Adrian would be able to come back with his tough mindset, with his pain tolerance, to come back and perform the way he did."

Nelson added, "I remember him defying everything the doctor told him not to do. Adrian would go to rehab and should have taken the rest of the day off, but he would get home and maybe rest up for a couple of hours. And everything that he did at rehab, he would redo at home or at a gym somewhere."

Although his methods were fast, furious and unadvised — Peterson hastened the standard 12-month recovery for an ACL injury to eight — his results were undeniably positive, and they inspired the team.

Loadholt's favorite memory of Peterson's comeback was watching him strain and sometimes beat receiver Percy Harvin, who was rehabbing a shoulder injury, off to the side at some early practices. "He was running up that big hill at Winter Park, and I'm like, 'This dude is ready to go!' " Loadholt recalled.

In late August, with training camp in Mankato in the rearview and the beginning of his MVP season out in front, A.D. was cleared for team drills, except there were reasonably strict parameters to protect him.

One of Smith's fondest memories of Peterson's ramp-up was that first practice back.

"Jared Allen had the whole defense fall down. Like, just kind of as a joke, like, we're not touching Adrian," The Hitman smiled. "I remember Jamarca [Sanford] telling me, 'Don't touch 2-8.' But then he'd run right at you, and he's running so fast, so it was honestly hard to get out of his way sometimes."

Allen was coming off his famous 22-sack season and had a reputation for sticking it to the man.

"What are we practicing for if we can't touch this guy? We're supposed to let him run all over us? F— that," he quipped. "So we had fun with it. When the first whistle blew, we fell down and let Adrian run."

Peterson didn't always take too kindly to his coaches' caution, though.

"I can remember Adrian getting [angry] because somebody didn't hit him one day. And, of course, you've got a high-profile player like that, you don't want to hit him and get him hurt, especially coming off injury, but he was mad," Robison shared. "He wanted contact. He was ready to go. He felt like he had something to prove coming off an injury. And, dude, did he make good on what he bargained for."

Peterson functioned on a pitch count and ran through mild stiffness in his left knee his first several games back but had plenty of plays where he looked like his normal self. In the opener at Jacksonville, he scored twice and had runs of 10 and 20 yards in overtime to set up Blair Walsh for the decisive field goal.

In Week 4, Peterson crossed the century mark in a division win at Detroit. The next game, he averaged 5.2 yards per rush and helped Minnesota pick up its fourth win. By Week 7, though, he looked different.

"You could tell after a few games, he started becoming really Adrian again," Smith recalled. "And that was when it was like, 'Oh, this is a different level here.' And it was almost like every game from kind of the midseason point on was just like 100 yards wasn't the goal — it was 200. Big runs. … It's not that I thought it was normal, but it became such a standard. It was pretty wild just to watch from the sideline."

In order, Peterson recorded games with 153, 123, 182, 171, 108, 210, 154 and 212 rushing yards. His pursuit of Dickerson was dinged at Houston when the Texans contained him to 86, but he responded epically with 199 against Green Bay on Dec. 30. His tally of 2,097 was finalized one year to the day of his surgery.

Sullivan pointed out how challenging it is to attain that type of consistency.

"Sometimes nothing goes right and it feels like the defense has 15 guys on the field," he shared. "And that entire season, it felt like no matter how many people they had on the field, they couldn't stop him."

All told, Peterson racked more than half his yards (1,184) in 2012 on rushes that gained at least 15, legging out 40 of them. The No. 2 player that season was Alfred Morris with 24, and the closest someone has come to matching Peterson's 40-piece over the past 13 seasons is DeMarco Murray's 27 in 2014.

His feats as a football player, and especially that season, are a testimony to his trust in a higher power.

"When people ask me about Adrian, I say, 'Man you know what I do know, he has such a great heart — he really does,'" Allen said, praising Peterson for his public display of faith in the midst of highs and lows.

Allen added, "You can tell he was raised on faith and that it's always played a part in his life and he knows it's an important part of his life, which is always great to see because there are some guys out there who have zero desire for that and lean into the accolades and what the world has given them."

Peterson did the inverse and glorified God with his uncommon strength and resilience in adversity.

'His body of work is unmatched'

Sullivan anchored the Vikings offensive line for more than 60% of Peterson's games, so it wouldn't be the craziest thing if he felt strongly about who is the greatest running back in NFL history. A.D. is a frontrunner guess.

Except, the 10-year center grew up in an era defined by Sanders. Nobody would ever touch the Lions running back. Even throughout his career, Sullivan acknowledged Barry as the best football had to offer.

Peterson's home-run style, however, is aging like a dessert wine — and Sullivan had his mind changed thanks to his son, who started playing tackle football and is buffing up his football history via YouTube.

"I showed my son Barry highlights. I showed him Lawrence Taylor. I showed him all these historical players, and I was like, let's just watch a career highlight of Adrian Peterson. And now stepping back and viewing it objectively, I do believe that Adrian Peterson is the best running back that's ever played in the NFL, above Barry Sanders, above everyone — and that's from watching highlights with my 10-year-old son."

Again, it's impossible to hush the debate and rampant opinions, so a smart strategy to be informed about Peterson's greatness is knowing the stats and the history. (Writer's note: I heard once that history is not a fact; it's an account of events attributed to people who lived in the experiences — and I agree.)

In both areas, there is evidence that makes Peterson's case stand as tall as characters in folktales.

"Me and my dad get into it all the time, but he's the best running back ever," Loadholt said without a sliver of doubt. "My dad will say Walter Payton. I'm going to say A.D. He is the best running back ever."

Fusco said, "It's hard to even compare him to anyone else. There are a lot of guys who have straight-ahead speed and all that stuff. But the way he was able to read holes, juke left to right, backwards, forward, spin, jump — whatever he had to do, he could do it — and that's what made him different."

It's plausible Peterson would have played 18 NFL seasons if he tried trailblazing a path directly from Palestine High School to the pros. He was that advanced for his age and that good out of the gate at Oklahoma.

But then the world would have missed out on a novel chapter in his epic football journey — from Peterson's freshman season for the ages to his father watching him play for the first time in person.

"When you look at what he did in high school, what he did in college and then what he did in the NFL, I don't know if anybody has put together a better résumé," Robison said. "A lot of guys, they get to college and they fall off, or they get to the NFL and they fall off, or the reverse action, which is they get better as they move along. Adrian seemed to be that way from high school all the way through the end of his career, so I think that's his legacy. He was probably one of the best, if not the best to do it at every level."

Peterson's post-Vikings career included abbreviated stints with five teams (Arizona, Detroit, New Orleans, Seattle and Tennessee) as well two seasons with Washington. His time with the latter from 2018-19 made future Hall of Fame tackle Trent Williams feel like "a kid in a candy store," he shared.

"Everybody was worried about the age on the driver's license. I knew he still had a lot to offer," Williams expressed about one of his dearest friends and former Oklahoma teammate. "Obviously, I watched him across the field on the sidelines playing with Minnesota, and I always just wanted to be able to have him with me in that backfield, again.

"He's one of the best running backs to ever touch the football, and his body of work is unmatched," Williams added. "You see what he did with the ball in his hand — it's hard to find a guy better in my opinion."

Peterson's most sublime campaign outside of Minnesota was 2018 when he rushed for 1,042 yards and became the oldest player at 33 years and 257 days to break away for a 90-plus-yard rushing touchdown.

"What he did was God-given — his speed, his strength, the way he ran the ball," Williams accentuated and rebuked the idea of players imitating A.D. "If every running back could run it like that, they would. But the reality is not a lot of people can duplicate that. … It's like, yeah, Steph Curry can make you shoot more 3s. Everybody can go out there and shoot more 3s, but everybody can't be 6-1, 220 and run a 4.3."

Smith, who was dubbed "Gangster White Boy" by Peterson because he approached the game with an equivalent seriousness and didn't back down from anything — "They probably didn't expect that out of a white dude from Notre Dame, probably thought I was kind of square," Smith laughed — was young and impressionable when Peterson was at the pinnacle. It was exciting and motivating, and all of the things.

"It was really just whenever I saw the gallop, because he was either about to run right through somebody's face or make a miss and take off," Smith assessed. "When you saw that, it was like, 'Ooh, what is he doing now?' Everyone would stand up off the bench and be like, 'OK, OK.' So more than just one play, it was the feeling that it gives, probably the viewer, too … just piques your interest a little bit."

"For me, it was easy. If you just looked at him, like, you were ready to go. You're not going to bring anything less than your best. And I think that's what the great ones — they just exude that," he added about A.D. 's intensity. "I don't know if he was born with it or he developed it, but it was a very real thing."

From his 15-season lens, Smith said the way Peterson "could hunt a home run was very unique."

​

Peterson's downhill burst, vision, patience and breakaway speed were essential ingredients to him cataloging long touchdown runs. Since 1925, his 16 from 50-plus yards is the most (one more than Sanders) per Stats Perform. His 15 from 60-plus also is the most and six more than Saquon Barkley, Jim Brown and Derrick Henry. Peterson's seven from 70-plus is tied with Henry and Chris Johnson for the most, and his five from 80-plus is one fewer than 'CJ2K' for second. What does that say about A.D.?

It confirms that All Day was a threat from Any Distance.

"He just would not be denied," said Smith, picking Peterson's determination as his best non-physical attribute. "That allowed him to build himself into who he was and then perform in a way that no one was ever going to outdo him from an effort standpoint, and as a running back, it's just hard to deal with.

"It's hard to deal with that every down. You come out, tackle him a couple times early, you think you got him, you think you got a good plan for him, guys are tackling him, and then he just slowly breaks you down," Smith continued. "And I think it's the mindset that he had that separated him."

Allen agreed on that front, noting "there was never a play he didn't think he could score."

"I think the ability to, no matter what, he got bottled up five times in a row, the next one could be it, right? I think there's a level of self-belief, there's a level of mental determination that this next one could be that one," Allen detailed. "Clearly, physically gifted, clearly, knows how to run the ball better than most. But I think what gets you there is a mental fortitude of that self-belief, self-confidence of just keep giving me the rock, and it was never in an arrogant way, either. Every time he was there, it genuinely felt like he was trying to help win the game."

Like Secretariat the racehorse, Peterson moved differently. He is 1-of-1.

"Some people may say, 'Oh, I want a back that was a bigger threat in the receiving game.' You know, 'I want a back that did X, Y or Z.' But when it comes to a pure runner of the football, there has never been an Adrian Peterson, and I'm not sure there ever will be another Adrian Peterson," Sullivan said. "Although, I know one of his kids (Adrian Jr.) is super-fast and set a state record down in Texas — so maybe Adrian Peterson 2.0 is coming from his own line. But his legacy is that he is the best running back in the history of the NFL."

INTRO: Chronicling Adrian Peterson’s Epic Football Journey

PART I: Adrian Peterson’s Epic Football Journey Part I: East Texas Legend

PART II: Adrian Peterson’s Epic Football Journey Part II: Oklahoma Sooners Phenom

PART III: Adrian Peterson's Epic Football Journey Part III: Minnesota Vikings Legacy