Vikings close door on Adrian Peterson, and backs his age rarely switch teams and thrive

Another domino fell in running back free agency Wednesday night, with Latavius Murray landing with the Minnesota Vikings, who closed the door on Thursday to Adrian Peterson era there.

The options are drying up, writes Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson, and it’s fair to wonder now where Peterson might land — there’s no obvious choice — and how much money he might play for. Neither might be whopper results. Peterson isn’t commanding a front-line salary, as his wintry market shows, and the team he eventually joins might have to expect commensurate results.

The list of 32-year-old (and older) running backs topping the 1,000-yard rushing mark in the past 20 NFL seasons is remarkably short: Emmitt Smith, Mike Anderson, Frank Gore and Ricky Williams. Of those, Williams’ 2009 season — after a mere 166 total carries the three years prior — was the best with 1,121 rush yards, a 4.7-yard average and 11 TDs.

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If you drop the number down to 800 yards rushing, nine backs reached that total at 32 or older in the past two decades. And of those, only three did so after switching teams from the season prior: Gore, Thomas Davis and DeAngelo Williams. Smith had a total of three 800-yard seasons and Gore has had two after that age.

So it’s not like it can’t be done. It’s just uncommon.

Now Peterson, having missed 30 of his past 51 games because of injuries and disciplinary reasons, would be more exception than rule at this point. Of course, we are talking about a player who came back from a torn ACL — in surprisingly quick time, mind you — to turn in an MVP campaign in 2012. The next year he was good, too. So dismissing Peterson’s chances of touching greatness again feels foolish and premature. We just can’t expect anything close to that level of consistent dominance again.

NFL teams clearly feel this way. And it takes a certain fit, too, for his next team. For instance, we have heard that the RB-needy Detroit Lions could make some sense. But are the Lions going to reshape their offense for Peterson? Not likely. He struggled in recent years as a shotgun runner, and the Lions were in shotgun almost 85 percent of their snaps last season. Percentage-wise, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (49 percent shotgun) and Dallas Cowboys (50) would make sense, but the Cowboys are not taking snaps away from Ezekiel Elliott just so Peterson can play for the team he grew up rooting for. Even Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who long has had a Peterson fascination, knows that.

Another question: Can Peterson be effective as a part-time back? He always has been a volume runner, used to getting 20-ish carries (19.7 average career) per game. In regular-season games in which he received fewer than 15 carries, he has averaged 3.8 yards per carry. In games with 15 or more runs, that number vaults up to 5.0 yards per carry. That’s a huge discrepancy. And in the past four seasons, when Peterson’s numbers have tailed off, he has averaged a mere 3.3 yards per carry in non-15-carry games.

Who is paying for that level of production? Perhaps Peterson can find a home as a Jerome Bettis-like counterpunch to a younger, speedier back. And maybe that makes sense for teams such as the Buccaneers, Oakland Raiders or New York Giants. But those teams and others seem to know the history suggests that expecting anything more than that doesn’t make much sense. Peterson also is not a big receiving threat, and his blitz-pickup skills never have been notable.

With other backs starting to find homes and with a deep, quality draft crop of backs looming, the number of places where Peterson makes sense — and where he even has a chance to thrive — is remarkably low.

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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at edholm@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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