Chronicling Adrian Peterson’s Epic Football Journey

Part I: East Texas Legend

You know Adrian Peterson?

There are keepsakes in Tommy Allison's office at Walnut Grove High School in Prosper, Texas, where he serves as football coach and campus coordinator for athletics, that provoke questions — and memories.

On top of a cabinet, a framed jersey leans against a white brick wall with a figurine toting the football in the foreground. On one side, there's a Sports Illustrated magazine circa 2004. On the other, a portrait of the first freshman Heisman Trophy runner-up in history. A signature adorns the memorabilia.

Allison recently replied with a drawn-out "Yeahhh" to a family passing through that got ensnared by the wall art honoring the East Texas running back. They asked, again, "Now, how do you know him?"

The Peterson craze at Palestine High School made Hollywood depictions of athletes' glory days seem underwhelming. There was a buzz back then that's tough to articulate — simpler felt than understood. Media outlets practically had encampments. Half of the visitors' section at home games was dedicated to excess Palestine fans. Peterson's youth coach, Steve Eudey, headed the booster club and quipped that the stadium was packed with shirts reading "Adrian's cousin" or "Adrian's uncle" or "Adrian's something."

"I'd laugh and say, 'Everybody in the stands is related to this kid,' " Eudey reminisced.

A 29-year-old Allison was tasked as the offensive coordinator during Peterson's senior football season after serving as an assistant under Jeff Harrell the prior year. Allison doubled as Peterson's basketball coach, so he understood Peterson's obsession with competition and his uncanny composure in both environments.

"He may get a steal, and he'd go dunk it, or he may dribble it off the side of his foot and go out of bounds," Allison said, joy saturating his voice. "But the way he carried himself and did it is what, for me, I will never forget. He played with this little smirk on his face. I remember being in timeouts in football, going, 'Hey, Adrian, listen, we need this,' and it's like, 'Coach, I got you.' That was it. And he did."

Allison's players at Walnut Grove are outfitted in the offseason with T-shirts that say, "Made Different." On one hand, it's a vow to the present, the program's creed. On the other, a nod to the past and to A.D.

"He was made different," Allison said, pausing for effect. "When I think of him, I think of somebody that's made different — a kid that had that size with that speed. He's just a freak, and he just makes me smile.

"Anything I think about him, it just makes me smile."

Courtesy Tommy Allison

Since savoring Peterson's stardom, Allison has been tied to talents like MLB All-Star pitcher Braxton Ashcraft, who caught 37 touchdowns one season at Robinson High School under Allison, and like Traylon Shead, who rushed for 10,298 yards and set a Texas state record with 141 career scores at Cayuga HS led by Allison. Although, "nothing compares to what happened with Adrian and that show," Allison assured.

"I wish I knew then as a football coach what I know now. We probably would have been a lot better," Allison confessed. "But it didn't matter. At the end of the day, it was hand No. 28 the ball and let him take care of it. Because here's the deal: You could hand him the ball, and if there was no hole and the linebacker stepped up, he was going to run his butt over. That's just a fact. Or, if he wanted, he would stick his foot in the ground; he would run directly sideways to the sideline because he was faster than everybody else, and God forbid he got 1-on-1 with the corner. That kid wanted none of Adrian Peterson."

The ripped teenager taught Allison. Specifically, not to get too cute in his gig as offensive coordinator.

In the initial game of Peterson's senior prance — Allison's debut guiding Palestine's offense — the first drive started off swimmingly. Peterson accelerated around the right side for 20 yards. Then Peterson dashed left for 20. And after that, the nation's No. 1 overall recruit, probably smirking, burst inside for 20 more.

"So, it's first-and-goal from the 8 and I'm this young play caller. I'm like, 'OK, yeah, you've got to do something different.' I remember we faked it to Adrian, and we dropped back and we got sacked. And the next play, I remember we called a sprint out … and we got sacked," Allison recalled. "And [then] I remember the head coach (Harrell) walking to me. He goes, 'Tommy, let me tell you something. You see 28 right there?' And I said, 'Yes, sir.' And he said, 'If you don't give him the ball, you just called your last play.' So we handed it to Adrian — it's third-and-goal from the 18 — and he cruises in for a touchdown.

"And there you go," he said. "The rest of the year is history."

'This is going to get crazy'

​Twice, Eudey was struck by an epiphany that Peterson was different.

The first occasion was happenstance. Peterson was playing for a separate youth team, but Eudey's son was asked to be part of it when they traveled to a football showcase in Texarkana. Peterson dominated.

In a series of games, opponents "ran him out of bounds and hemmed him up," Eudey said, "but I don't think they ever tackled him the whole day. And I remember on the way home, one of the boys riding with me said, 'I'm going to remember this trip because we went and ate coconut shrimp,' or we did this.

"I said, 'All of you guys are going to remember today because you played with Adrian Peterson.' "

The second instance was on the precipice of "the recruiting wars." Peterson, who lived with Eudey in the eighth grade to help cope with family tragedies — losing his brother, Brian, to a drunk driving accident, and his father Nelson's incarceration — was a junior now, and college interest was about to runneth over.

On this day, one of the main recruiting agencies shared information that made Eudey bullish about the future. The person's name on the other line escapes Eudey in the present — Harrell used to say to "Call Steve" when he was inundated by coaches and bloggers — but the feeling that rushed over him doesn't.

"He called me and he said, 'Mr. Eudey, you do realize that I'm fixing to make Adrian the No. 1 recruit on my list.' I said, 'You mean, in Texas?' and he said, 'No sir, I'm making him the No. 1 recruit in the nation.' "

Eudey reacted accordingly: " 'Oh my god,' " he thought to himself. " 'This is going to get crazy.' "

"You know how normal people have wallpaper on the wall? Well, his wallpaper was college letters and college envelopes and brochures of every school wanting him," Peterson's friend David Cummings said.

Courtesy Tom Lemming

Cummings is a year older than Peterson, and they go way back as neighbors, and AAU teammates on a squad coached by Nelson and as opponents in youth league football. Also, Cummings was quarterback at Palestine when Peterson transferred from the crosstown school and joined the varsity his junior season.

"His sophomore year, we had a coach here that came in (to Palestine) and he only coached one year — and he wasn't a believer. That's all I can say. He wasn't a believer," Cummings shared. "Funny story, the next year he went to a school we had on the schedule, and I want to say Adrian hit him for 396 [yards]."

Peterson was arrowing to elite status as a freshman not 10 miles down the street at Westwood High School but ended up busting his knee. Eudey recalled disagreements between young A.D. and the coaches there about adequate rest. They wanted Peterson to rehab for the following season. Peterson desired "to play basketball and run and [do] all that stuff that a boy does at that age," Eudey said. So, A.D. switched schools and played JV football due to circumstances, including the doubt Cummings outlined.

That spring, Harrell met Peterson when he was the head track coach, before he was hired to lead the football team. (He watched Peterson shave a second off his time in the 100 meters by his senior year.)

He was sold right away on Peterson's prospects as a football player and started him at tailback in 2002.

Harrell said, "After about two games, Texas A&M sent a full scholarship in the mail. He was just amazing."

"You could tell he was destined to be great from the minute he touched the field," added Cummings, whose recollection of Peterson being "The One" dates to that Texarkana tournament where he estimates Peterson averaged four touchdowns over six games. "Everything he did was amazing. Every time he touched the ball, man, he was a threat to score, kind of like it was in the NFL. Nothing ever changed."

Cummings attested: "One thing I can say about Adrian is everything that he went through made him stronger. He used life experiences for his fuel, and that's what made him great. That's just what made him the greatest. Everything that he went through, he used pain as fuel."

Part I: East Texas Legend ~ Contunued

'That kind of athlete'

In 1978, Tom Lemming laid eyes on Eric Dickerson in Sealy, Texas. After that, he saw Herschel Walker in Wrightsville, Georgia, Bo Jackson in Bessemer, Alabama, and Marcus Dupree in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

"What it was back then was big guys who can really run," said Lemming, a titan in recruiting analysis for almost half a century. "Now you don't see that. You haven't seen anybody in years, since, really, Adrian."

There's one from Yulee, Florida, Lemming made note of Derrick Henry, but he was sought as an "athlete" instead of specifically as a running back.

From his rolodex of reports, the players that Lemming likes to lump together are Dickerson, Walker, Jackson, Dupree and Peterson. He met the last of the magical five at a Luby's in College Station. Lemming selected Peterson to play in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl and tabbed him as the country's top player.

"Usually, our No. 1 kid could be a little cocky," he said. "But Adrian wasn't. He was quiet, nice and polite.

"He carried it very well," Lemming stated of the Nation's Best mantle. "And a lot of the guys don't because they're 18-year-old kids that are being treated not only by fans and coaches but their parents, most of the time, treat them like they're the head of the family and they're the star. Adrian didn't act like that. I was surprised when I met him at Luby's, how quiet he was, and very sincere and very nice."

Peterson of course was anything but between the whistle and lines. He cut viciously and ran angrily.

"I know he worked hard at it, but he was born with a great running back body — great speed, vision, balance and moves. He had everything," Lemming said. "We haven't seen his like in the past 25 years."

Courtesy Steve Eudey

Cummings stated, "the bloodline was destined to be Hall of Fame worthy," pointing to the superb genetics Peterson gained from his dad, an All-Big Sky guard on the Idaho State basketball team in the mid-80s, and his mom, Bonita Jackson, a state champion sprinter who ran at the University of Houston.

"I played college ball at a small school in Oklahoma, and I came home on a bye weekend, and man, I've never seen so many people at a high school football game watching him," said Cummings. "It was just a whole new atmosphere. He turned Palestine into somewhere that people liked to be — just to see him."

While Peterson transformed his humble hometown into a destination that college recruiters zipped to at the phenom's pace, the state, top to bottom, including future rivals and teammates, sat on the edge of its seat. Brian Robison, who started his football story two hours away in Splendora and starred at Texas before the Vikings drafted him 102nd overall in 2007, heard murmurs of a kid in Palestine ready-made for the big stage. Word of mouth — there was no social media filled with video highlights — made skeptics, at first, then believers.

"In a lot of ways, it was kind of like the LeBron James effect in football. He was doing so many crazy things that it just sounded fake," said Robison, who spent a decade in the Vikings locker room with Peterson.

Totals from those days are sometimes incongruent because stats were handheld and compiled individually. The Texas High School Football Hall of Fame credited Peterson with 5,011 yards and 54 rushing touchdowns over his junior and senior seasons. In the latter, A.D. was just shy of averaging 12 yards a pop.

"His stats are amazing, but they could have been twice as high had I played him all the time," said Harrell, who couldn't fathom the possibility of Peterson getting hurt when Palestine got ahead. "So, you know, it's just one of those deals I couldn't live with, a kid that talented. I didn't let him return kicks. I didn't let him return punts. I think Adrian could have played in the NFL at linebacker. He could have done anything. He could have played baseball, tennis — whatever he wanted to do. He's that kind of athlete."

In some games, Palestine's staff had to hide Peterson's helmet so he couldn't reenter the fray.

"Boy, that used to kill him," sighed Harrell, who recently retired after 30 seasons in Texas and five in Arkansas.

Allison said Peterson had to take off his shoulder pads, "otherwise he'd find a way to carry the ball more." Additionally, there were practice periods where Peterson was removed from drills so the team could improve. He was too quick, too difficult to tackle, too good to be denied if things were awry.

"He always made it right," Allison said proudly.

Everybody within his gravity — foes, friends, teammates, coaches, strangers — became privileged observers. They reveled over A.D.'s ability to outrun, outmuscle and outmaneuver entire defenses.

"The players were 'ahhing' and 'oohing' about him in practice because everyone heard about him, but they hadn't seen him," Lemming recalled Peterson stealing the spotlight in San Antonio versus a bounty of college-bound All-Stars. "His team, the West team, practiced, and they were going crazy [over what he was doing]. Then the East players told me later … They said, 'Geez, this guy's like an NFL player already.' "

Also a talent to behold on the track, Peterson sprinted 100 meters in 10.33 seconds when he was 18 years old. For context, Justin Gatlin won back-to-back NCAA championships in the 100 meters, clocking 10.08 and 10.22, before turbo-ing the 100 in sub-10 seconds to clinch gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

"The first time I met him, I realized he was real fast — faster than everybody," said former Oklahoma Sooners defensive back, and A.D.'s buddy, Marcus Walker, who then paused and laughed nostalgically.

Currently an assistant coach at Syracuse and a Waco, Texas native, Walker initially met Peterson on the track circuit and then clicked throughout prolific recruiting processes. They tightened their bond during the U.S. Army All-American Bowl. Twenty-three years later, his memory of Peterson at that event is indelible.

One practice into the all-star experience, Walker said he phoned home and raved to his family and friends. "I was like, 'Yo, listen. This dude is better than Derrick,' " he said, his smile on the other end of the line apparent as he paralleled Peterson's splendor to Waco High School and Texas Longhorns (and four-time Pro Bowl) sensation Derrick Johnson. "I remember him running past me at practice and I felt that wind — I was like, 'Gollee!' Like, 'Damn, OK, he is something else – different than everybody else."

Peterson and Walker were roommates at OU and reciprocated attitudes about outworking one another — and anyone else, of course. They were iron sharpening iron, and A.D.'s mental soundtrack was prophetic in the end.

"He always talked about being the best — being the best ever," explained Walker, who tells his players nowadays, "You just don't become Adrian Peterson out of nowhere."

Part I: East Texas Legend ~ Contunued

'A hero we could touch'

Peterson's only gear was fast.

"I can remember going down and watching one of his high school games his senior year, and he literally, when they were on offense, if you got up to go use the bathroom and come back, there's a good chance you just missed a 60-yard run or an 80-yard run," said former Oklahoma running backs coach Cale Gundy.

Many colleges spent 18 months, give or take, trying every which way to swoon Peterson. The Sooners efforts were in a class of their own, though. Gundy, with assistant coach Darrell Wyatt and Head Coach Bob Stoops, used their one "in-home visit" going to the Federal Correctional Institute in Texarkana where Nelson Peterson was serving a sentence that limited his presence — but not his impact — in Adrian's life.

"If you look at all the great parents, all the different people who produced or created a prodigy, I think there's a similar feature in all those people, and that's just pushing those young men and women to the limit, and I think that he always did," Carlos Wilson, one of Adrian's youth coaches, mentioned of Nelson.

"He demanded excellence and he pushed him, and he didn't let off on him. And so even when he was not there, physically, the respect factor was still at a high, high level," Wilson added. "He was very, I would say, strict and very hard on him because I think he saw what nobody else saw. Like, Adrian has a chance to be special, and he wasn't going to allow him not to be special due to work ethic or character or things like that. And so, you know, he stayed on him a lot. A lot of times I would want to say, 'Man, c'mon, cut him some slack,' but hell, I'm scared of him, he's my mentor, so hell, I don't want to step in."

Adrian's talent on the football field amazed Wilson when he played for him in the 5th and 6th grade, but the former D-I basketball coach has known him since he was born because he grew up under Nelson's wing on the hardwood. Wilson said he realized Adrian was different when Nelson brought him to the Lincoln Gym and he hung on bars — not monkeying around like on the playground — and did chin-ups.

Oklahoma was aware of the father-and-son bond, and Nelson valued the school's efforts to meet with him.

"I've never been to the pen before. I don't know what I'm getting into. I have no idea. I mean, we've had no communication with the dad — wasn't able to. But there was a Sunday, the first day we could go out (under NCAA rules), and we had the first visit lined up," Gundy recalled of the unique recruiting pitch.

"We sat down outside. It was an open area. There were no fences or anything, and out comes Nelson," Gundy added, transmitting the anticipation. "Even if you saw Nelson Peterson today, you would think, 'Damn, did that dude play in the NFL?' I mean, he's physically just a good-looking, sharp, well-built guy. And we sat there for about, I don't know, an hour, and visited with him, and had the best conversation."

The face-to-face with Nelson taught Gundy "why A.D. was the way he was," he said.

From vice-grip handshakes to mannerisms, to politeness, Gundy saw a spitting image of Adrian in Nelson, particularly as it pertained to his treatment of people and physical exceptionalism. Ultimately, the trip to Texarkana persuaded Gundy that A.D. was influenced by his father to rise under pressure.

"I just think one of the things about him that was different is he took things so seriously," Wilson expressed. "Every rep, whether it's practice, whether it's a sprint, whether it's a scrimmage, whether it's a game that you're up by 30 or 40, every rep that he had, he took it like his life was depending on it."

The discipline and desire to work — and outwork — matched him to the Crimson and Cream, Gundy believed. Lo and behold, Nelson Peterson retained a "special love" for Oklahoma that dated to his near decision to play basketball for Billy Tubbs after attending junior college, but he never swayed his son.

All he asked was for Stoops to give Adrian "a fair chance."

"The only thing promised to him was an opportunity, and I think that's what finally clinched the deal with him," said Gundy, alluding to Nelson's request. "He didn't need anybody to give him everything."

Of all the physical attributes that decisively separated Peterson from his peers, none surpassed his intangibles. That's what coaches and teammates, decades after his high school dominance, preached.

The positive effects have a degree of permanence.

"He allowed us to be able to say from a town of 20,000 or how many of them we have, he gave us a sense of pride that we were the best in something. You know, it's kind of like if one of us makes it, it's like all of us made it," Wilson said. "And so we were able to turn the TV on and be able to say, 'Hey, we're the best. The best that has ever done it came from this same neighborhood. It came from this same town.'

"It's not like we're in Dallas or New York or Houston or something like that. Like, you saw him every day. He comes home, you see him. If you call him, he's going to answer. We had a hero that we could actually touch," Wilson continued. "When you say Palestine, Texas, the first thing that I mention, if you don't know where Palestine, Texas is, 'Do you know Adrian Peterson, the running back?' "

The answer, always, is yes, and people connect that Palestine is the quaint city Peterson put on the map.

And is the place full of faces he has never forgotten.

"He got elected into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame, and I remember going to that, and I hadn't seen him in 15 or 16 years," Allison shared. "He's up there doing his speech, and he sees me and he sees a couple of other coaches over there and calls us out by name. It's like, 'Wow,' you know, those are the things — as good as he was, that's what I remember. And I remember him coming after and giving me a big hug."

Akin to his abilities to outrun, outmuscle and outmaneuver, Peterson had a knack for impressing people with his graciousness and dogged determination, and upbeat disposition even against extreme difficulty.

"The way he was with classmates, with everybody, the way he carried himself, just the little smile on his face that he always [had]," Allison reflected on Peterson's impact. "Even when he played, this little smile, this little gotcha. And I don't remember any moment where he flipped out or was mad. I just remember … 'I got this'; that bit of confidence that he carried with this little smirk on his face that I'll never forget."

Gundy recognized the qualities A.D. possessed and said he wished the lengths Peterson went to achieve his dreams were cataloged in some capacity, so current players could reach theirs more easily.

"He was gifted, but his drive and his passion, which was instilled in him by his mom and dad, is just, it's like no other," Gundy noted matter of factly. "I'd give anything if you could bottle all that up, or if you had that old VHS tape and somebody filmed him for three years or even in little league and junior high and high school when his dad was around him, and how he raised him and how he pushed him and challenged him and how he accessed all that, and never backing down from anything, and to show that.

"I think it would blow people away the type of person that A.D. was," Gundy added.

Part I: East Texas Legend ~ Contunued

'Something we'll never forget'

The first half of Peterson's high school finale showed his rare strain, rarer strength and rarest speed.

On his second carry versus Hallsville in the Class 4A bi-district playoff game Nov. 14, 2003, Peterson stepped twice to his right then transferred his weight and crossed his quarterback's face to accept a counter handoff going left. He was greeted at the line of scrimmage by a pair of defenders, and then a third as he reversed direction, and a fourth as he built depth and width galloping around the right side. Peterson outflanked the fifth and lowered his pads to level the sixth a few feet inside of the numbers.

He netted half a yard and Palestine punted, but good heavens it was epic.

"People have asked me questions about it before — what'd we do to stop him? Well, it's not that we stopped him," former Hallsville Head Coach Roger Adams said. "Through all my research, I believe he ended up with 241 yards that night, and he scored three times. But I guess we contained him enough."

Palestine's second possession began mere inches from its goal line and Peterson on one play trucked a defender to avoid being tackled in the end zone. His fifth rush of the evening and first of the third drive after Hallsville jumped in front 7-0 picked up a handful, about as much as his first four carries combined.

And A.D.'s sixth, well, it went the distance — 52 yards — on a QB option pitch on third down. The play itself didn't catch Hallsville by surprise because it knew Peterson was a candidate to get loose any time, but his can't-touch-me speed and can't-hold-onto-me-if-you-do strength outdid their high expectations.

"It's a whole different time back then," said Roger's son Kyle, a kicker/punter and receiver on that Hallsville team. "We didn't have social media. So, you're reading newspaper clippings, you're watching the news on TV. We knew he was good. I'm not sure that we really had a concept of how good he was."

Peterson toted it eight times on the offense's next turn and plunged in from short range for six. Then, Palestine recovered a pooch kick, and Peterson re-strapped his work boots after a 12-yard loss on a sack. His 15th rush, with nearly 10,000 fans holding their breath at Trinity Mother Frances Rose Stadium, was a shotgun handoff into the jaws of Hallsville's defense. Like second nature, Peterson spun out of one tackler and accelerated away from another before he was dragged down 25 yards later. His 16th carry came immediately and was a snapshot of a battering ram falling forward onto a heap of defenders for 5 yards. A.D. got a break on the next play as the quarterback ran one — to set up his final prep touchdown.

"This dude looked like he was a Greek god out there," Kyle Adams said earnestly. "I've not — even coaching now for 18 years — I've not seen a high school kid anything like what Adrian Peterson was."

"He still defines Palestine," Kyle added. "Ironically, our regional track meet is hosted in Palestine, and so I get to go back to Palestine every year, and every year they have this Adrian Peterson jersey on their press box. It shows you how much he has left a legacy on a program, a city, a school district and a community."

At the 7, from the I-formation, foreshadowing some of his future successes, Peterson rushed off-tackle left. Six players swarmed him like a furious beehive, so Peterson, outside the hashes now, planted his foot, flipped his head, erased tackling angles on the backside and ran, impossibly, to the opposite pylon.

A.D. captured it plus a two-score lead in the process, and he cemented his status as an East Texas legend.

"God, he was phenomenal," Roger Adams accentuated.

Adams is in his 45th season as a coach and has faced countless talents. He touts 1992 first-round draft pick quarterback Tommy Maddox, who played at L.D. Bell HS in Dallas-Fort Worth, as one of the finest.

But "as far as a pure athlete, being physical and fast, no doubt that Mr. Peterson was the best," he said.

Roddrick Muckelroy, who inspired Hallsville as it scored 13 unanswered in the second half and dashed Peterson's and Palestine's dreams, agreed, in a sea of Texas talent, "Adrian was just on a different level."

"I always laugh [telling] people. I'm like, 'I think Adrian went for about 100, maybe 150 to almost 199 yards that first half,' but we were able to calm down," Muckelroy said of the comeback. "There were several plays where me and him, we were just battling. It was one of them things that's just a dog fight from the beginning to the end. And if you gave him an inch, he would take a mile. So it was like, man, you cannot take any play for granted, or next thing, you're looking up at 28 running down the sideline."

Muckelroy didn't know Peterson personally, yet. He only knew what A.D. looked like shredding opponents because he got home in time to watch Friday night lights clips on a local channel. He started paying attention to Peterson when, well, "They gave him the full highlights for their news segments."

"Leading up to that game, it was crazy," Muckelroy recalled with energy as if it was yesterday. "My dad, he let me know [the stakes] every day. Like, 'Hey, Adrian Peterson.' Every day of the week. He was waking up [and saying], 'Adrian Peterson.' I couldn't wait to get to that game and kind of see how it all unfolded.

"I respected everybody, especially coming out of East Texas. There's a different type of brotherhood," Muckelroy added. "But at the same time, you want to go test your abilities to see where you stand. And for me that was big because if I'm gonna play the No. 1 running back in the nation and I think I'm a top linebacker, this is going to be on everyone's radar. So leading up to that game it was a different mindset."

Roughly four times smaller than Palestine, the win for Hallsville — over Peterson — had a real David vs. Goliath vibe and is an enormous source of pride for Muckelroy, who led the Longhorns in tackles in 2008 and 2009 before being drafted by Cincinnati in 2010 (later on, he trained with Peterson in the offseason).

"I ended up with 20-some tackles that game," Muckelroy said without gloating. "You heard all the noise all week long: 'No. 1 running back.' You have people at your own school like, 'Man, y'all gon' get beat by the No. 1 running back.' So to go [play like] we did, everybody was excited. It was a big thing for the city."

One grade younger than A.D., Muck' noted they met face-to-face a few years later at a joint-birthday party for Peterson and his college teammate Clint Ingram, a Hallsville grad. "He's like, 'I know you from somewhere, I can't put my [finger] on it,'" Muck recalled. "And we just got to chopping it up, like, 'Bro, I'm from Hallsville — Muckelroy,' and after that we've just kind of been tight; we've been cool ever since."

The loss came at a cost around town but didn't diminish one bit the euphoria Peterson gave to Palestine.

"I remember being at church [a few weeks later] and somebody said something about it and my mom came to me — my own mother, you know, who came to every one of the games," Allison remembered. "And she's like, 'Son, you're telling me you had the National Player of the Year and y'all got beat in the first round? What is wrong with you?' It was just crazy. Just fun, man. Something that we'll never forget."

Writer's note: Reporting on Peterson's epic football journey — doing my best to capture his greatness — was a big undertaking, and a special one to me because A.D. is one of the players who influenced my athletic youth. I loved the way he ran, smashing and gassing defenses in his 2-8 jersey (specifically with yellow trim around the collar). Now, I'm amazed by his love for the game and the respect and unbridled passion with which he played. His skills, obviously, were extraordinary. I interviewed 30-plus people with a front-row seat to A.D., in addition to sitting with Adrian's father, Nelson, for a half hour when he visited TCO Performance Center. Each person shared information that convinced me of something I always felt to be true: Peterson is one of a kind. Although the insights were too expansive to fit them all into this format, I owe each source a heartfelt shoutout for their time, so I want to extend a special thanks to the following people who had a hand in or witnessed Peterson's legend. Their reminiscence ensures that the memory of A.D. as a Palestine Wildcat, Oklahoma Sooner and Minnesota Viking will live for generations.

From April-October, I enjoyed speaking with Kyle & Roger Adams, Jared Allen, Tommy Allison, Darrell Bevell, Jammal Brown, David Cummings, Alonzo Dotson, Steve Eudey, Heath Farwell, Jerome Felton, Brandon Fusco, Cale Gundy, Jeff Harrell, Clint Ingram, Malcolm Kelly, Tom Lemming, Phil Loadholt, Curtis Lofton, Bryant McKinnie, Roddrick Muckelroy, Allen Patrick, David Robinson, Brian Robison, Harrison Smith, John Sullivan, Berry Tramel, Bobby Wade, Marcus Walker, Trent Williams and Carlos Wilson.

Part II: Oklahoma Sooners Phenom

Clint Ingram blurted out, "Like Paul Bunyan."

As spools of time are unwound and stories are narrated, they have a distinct sound. It's as if Adrian Peterson was a folk hero, and the recollection of his lightning speed and thunderous style are tall tales.

"It's crazy to mention, but out of his uncles and cousins, like Adrian is one of the smallest guys of everybody," Ingram shared. "And, if you go to Palestine, Texas, you will hear all these stories of these guys picking up cars. I actually saw one lift a car up. His uncle, his mom's brother, his name was Pookie, and he was like 'Popeye the Sailor Man.' And he picked the car off the ground and the wheels came up. Like, it was some unseen stuff. And they all had that mentality. It's like a tribe, man."

Ingram, a 2006 third-round draft pick and former Sooners team captain, was as tight as anyone with Peterson at Oklahoma. He's two years older — precisely, they share a birthday March 21 — and had a headstart on Peterson, but their bond was special. "Blood couldn't make us any closer," Ingram attested.

Competitiveness was one thread that tied them at the hip.

"He'd say, 'Oh, that's this color,' and I'd say, 'No, it's that color' and then he's ready to wrestle, and he'd want to wrestle for 20 minutes. That's where he got his name from — 'All Day,' " Ingram reflected on their 20-plus year friendship. "Whatever it is he's doing, he's going to do it until it wears everybody else down.

"I didn't see nothin' other than what I saw all the time," Ingram added of A.D.'s effervescence. "If we were somewhere and were going to get something to eat, I would intentionally speed up just to get to the door, or whatever it is, before him because I knew how competitive he was. If you get it before him, he's like, 'Hey let's do that again,' like it was a race. Like, 'Man, we weren't racing, I just got here before you.' He's like, 'No, no, let's try it again. Let's start over.' I mean that's just a part of who he was, so I never saw anything different. I just saw somebody who didn't want to lose at anything."

Ingram helped host Peterson on his official visit to OU but admitted he didn't fathom what lay ahead.

"They had done an article on him, talking to him about how he felt about going to college, and he was like, 'I wish I could just go straight to the NFL. I think I'm as good as Emmitt Smith right now.' And the guys on the team actually didn't take too fond of that," Ingram said. "They're like, 'Man, y'all reading this? Y'all seeing this?' I just kind of overheard it in the locker room and looked at it and laughed at it."

It took a single session in shorts and shirts for the upperclassmen to concede to the freshman.

"Once we got out to the first day of 7-on-7s, they threw Adrian a swing pass, and I was outside linebacker, and we went man-to-man — and this is the first play, everybody was just going through the motions," Ingram recalled. "I gave a nice little burst, and it sounded like a dadgum parade running down the field, he was hitting the ground so hard. And he ran all the way to the end zone. It was 60, 70 yards.

"He just ran all the way down like a lunatic," Ingram quipped.

Absolutely captivated, he hustled back to the huddle and notified his teammates. Ingram told them, " 'Hey, if this kid runs the ball with pads on the way he ran the ball just now, everything he said in that article was 100 percent true.' And it was off one snap, one pass, one run. I mean, it all made itself clear."

Bills Assistant Director of College Scouting and former Sooners defensive lineman Alonzo Dotson added, "It's not like we weren't a well-to-do team. So, for an article to say that, we were just like, 'OK, all right, this guy thinks he's — I know you can't quote me here — top [stuff],' you know? Well, I [kid] you not, man, his first practice, his freshman year, full pads, we had a practice inside the stadium and, on the first play of the scrimmage, Adrian took the ball 80 yards for a touchdown on the first-team defense.

"Everyone looked at each other like, 'Oh, [snap], we got one.' There are a million stories," Dotson said.

Peterson, ultimately, accomplished more within four months on campus than any first-year college football player in history. From Sept. 4, 2004-Jan. 4, 2005, he inscribed his name on the sport, recording the most rushing attempts (339), and yards (1,925) to that point, and becoming the first true freshman runner-up in Heisman Trophy voting — still the highest placement for someone a year out of high school.

"It looked like he was a junior or senior from Day 1," said Vikings Legend and former Texas Longhorn Brian Robison, first facing Peterson's greatness in the 2004 Red River Rivalry. "And I just remember thinking whenever we were preparing for him, it was like, 'This dude's years beyond what he should be.'

"He had this little head nod deal, and Viking fans will know exactly what I'm talking about," Robison flashed back. "But he had this little head nod deal when he got in the open field — when he really just was trying to crank it up and run away from people — and that was something you didn't want to see."

People marveled at Peterson's introductory season. It ratified his upper-echelon talent, and it bore a widespread belief that if anyone could go from high school to the pinnacle, Peterson could have done it.

"With no hesitation, I would say yes," said Marcus Walker, the U.S. Army All-American DB who met Peterson on the track circuit in high school and roomed with him at Oklahoma. "We had a record number of players get drafted for our school [in 2005], but he was the best player on the team."

Peterson's ascension in Norman persevered through injury setbacks and withstood entire defenses plotting to stop him.

They rarely did.

A.D. became the first OU running back since the 1970s and fourth overall at the time to break the 4,000-yard rushing barrier. His 22 100-yard games rank second to Steve Owens' 23, and his half-dozen 200-yard games is tied with Samaje Perine for second to Billy Sims' seven.

"He was literally a god on campus," 12-time Pro Bowl tackle Trent Williams said. "That was my first exposure to real stardom. The only reason he was in college was because you had to go for three years."

Peterson gave every bead of sweat a purpose, and in doing so eternally impressed every onlooker.

"I think he's the best player to ever tote a football," Ingram said. "And that's with gaps and breaks and time off and injuries and everything else under the sun. I mean, when he was healthy and he had the ball — even the greatest guys who've ever played, a lot of them agree — he was a force to be reckoned."

'All I see is the blue Oklahoma sky'

Jammal Brown heard from family on his mom's side in Crockett, Texas about a kid roughly 35 miles away that was "the real deal." Brown, the 13th overall pick in 2005, was indifferent to the hype, though. Oklahoma, after all, was a perennial power and attracted recruits from hotbeds bigger than East Texas.

"I was confused with the name, too," Brown said candidly. "I'm like, 'How come y'all don't call him A.P.?' "

Brown learned why — the truth about Peterson — when Head Coach Bob Stoops started moving up team drills so A.D. didn't exhaust himself going from the offense's 20 to the end zone on every rep. "It's not like you could tell him to slow down," Brown said. "Once he got the ball, it was all day, he was gone."

Peterson's speed, strength and stamina were differentiators, but his love to be great was his separating trait. Cale Gundy remarked, "The man above touched him. He was freakish and powerful. … But he [also] had passion. He loved to play ball. That's what he wanted to do. He just wanted to play, play, play."

Gundy, who instructed running backs at Oklahoma for 16 seasons (1999-2014), likened inside-run drills in that era to "bloodbaths," and the defense that current coach Brett Venables led was "physical as hell."

For three years, A.D. prospered against the daily challenges. He hit holes with a velocity that was exclusive to propulsion test facilities — until he got to town — which forced OU's staff to deepen his alignment in certain sets. As a freshman Peterson was so invaluable to the program that coaches outfitted him with a blue jersey, as worn by Sooners quarterbacks, to keep him safe from his own fury.

Dotson recalled Stoops even having a jersey custom made for Peterson to wear in spring practices later in his career. The numbers stitched on it made Peterson stick out more than he already did. They were blue instead of white.

"Coach Stoops was like, 'Don't [bleeping] touch him!'" Dotson roared with laughter.

Part II: Oklahoma Sooners Phenom ~ Continued:

The extra measures to shield A.D. didn't always protect teammates in his path.

"I stopped, but he didn't," Curtis Lofton said with such clarity of Peterson pulverizing a lane in one practice that it sounded like yesterday. "The first thing that hit the ground was the back of my head.

"I almost did a [backward] somersault, he hit me so hard," Lofton added, stupefied. "I actually have a horseshoe underneath my chin from the metal clipping on his helmet. From that moment I wanted to fight him, but I knew if I fought A.D. I would have to fight everybody else on the team, so I took my pill."

Growing up, Lofton pined to play for rival Oklahoma State, but said he decided to pledge the Crimson and Cream because of Peterson, who changed his mind on his official visit. It worked out all right. The linebacker earned 2007 All-America honors, and Atlanta selected him 37th overall in 2008. He was uniquely privileged to square up the fabled running back in college practices and professional games, and he grew to love Peterson's "1,000-mile-per-hour" disposition so long as he was on the good side of it.

On Nov. 26, 2005, Lofton could have been bracing for the pain train. Instead, he basked in a 42-14 win in the Bedlam Series that featured Peterson rumbling for 237 yards and scoring from 84 and 71. It was an encore from the prior year when the Cowboys failed to wrangle A.D. as he ran for 249 in a 38-35 victory.

"Man, he made them look like — you know when you're in high school and you go back to the elementary school and you're helping, you're out at recess with those little, little kids," Lofton painted a visual of Peterson's 2005 spectacle. "That's what it seemed like out there when A.D. was playing them."

"It was phenomenal," Ingram apprised Peterson's college play overall. "It was as advertised."

Peterson didn't begin his storied OU career as the starting tailback — Kejaun Jones held that honor — yet he rotated in right away and ripped off nine consecutive 100-yard games out of the blocks. Smack dab in the middle of that streak, he met Texas for the first time, and the steers were stacked. Vince Young at quarterback. Cedric Benson in the backfield. Four future Top 20 draft picks on defense: Michael Griffin, Michael Huff, Derrick Johnson and Aaron Ross. It was a monumental day — a rivalry, duh — but moreover the chance for a young man to show his home state what it lost when he went across the river to play for Oklahoma. Gundy estimated A.D. knew 75-80% of the opposing players in that matchup.

The Sooners strategized a plan to dupe the Longhorns by "showing that we're running power," Gundy said, but in reality log blocked the edge defender crashing inside and bounced Peterson to the outside. Gundy recalled the tweak working like a charm on a first-and-10 rush when OU was backed up at its 4.

"They weren't ready for it," Gundy said of the '28 back' play call that resulted in a 44-yard gallop by Peterson. "We were like, 'Whoa!' We thought he was just going to take it to the house right off the bat."

A.D. never sniffed the paint in that game at Memorial Stadium. Jones accounted for OU's only touchdown in a 12-zip win — but he was the lone player that season to run for more than 100 yards against Texas, which limited opponents to 96.7 rushing yards per game in its 11 other contests (and won all 11 of 'em). With tender disdain for the memory, Robison said, "The only thing we can hang our hat on is he didn't score a touchdown. But at the end of the day, he ran for 225. What does it really matter?"

Brown, recognized as the Outland Trophy winner, a.k.a. college football's top lineman that season had fun pointing out Peterson was mortal. He remembered laying a key block on Derrick Johnson to help spring A.D. for 44, but he also didn't forget that Peterson fumbled going out of bounds three plays later.

"He ran so hard he damn near used the ball trying to run somebody over … and I remember giving him an earful, you know, telling him, 'Man, don't be a stupid freshman, think about the game! You trying to get an extra yard — get out!' " laughed Brown, adding A.D. refocused in a wink. "If you watch him and he gets to running, the head gets bobbin', it's almost like he's not there. Like in the huddle, he's so locked in. He won't blink. He's damn near biting through his mouthpiece. … And that's what I loved about him, too.

"That each day," Brown noted, "you were going to get the most out of him."

It didn't matter who was in front of A.D., either. It's not an exaggeration to say he practiced the way he played. Even dressed in bright armor and with teammates like Lofton coming to balance but deferring to his blue jersey, Peterson "would chase people down on the field just to get some contact," Ingram said.

Williams, a future lock for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, confirmed claims that Peterson was different.

"I don't know if it's glorious, but the thing that sticks out is my first time ever [getting reps] with the starters in practice. One of the things the older guys told me was, 'Hey, you got to get out of the way because when he comes through it's like a train on the tracks. He's not stopping. He's running through everybody,' " Williams remembered. "And of course, my first play I go in there and I'm in the hole and, literally, he just knocks me smooth off my feet running through me — all I see is the blue Oklahoma sky.

"Still is embarrassing, man, getting run over by a guy 100 pounds less than me," Williams chuckled. "But that's when I realized, you know, it's a different tempo, man — he's a different breed of back."

'Those stories are mythical'

Berry Tramel's gut instinct is that Peterson was ready at 19 for the NFL.

"Hardly ever do you see a college football player who could do that the way NBA guys used to do it, but Adrian could have," said Tramel, whose first season on the Sooners beat was 1979, overlapping with the last hurrah of Oklahoma's Heisman-winning RB Billy Sims before Detroit selected him first overall.

Tramel is a veteran journalist of the Sooner State and regularly covered Peterson's heyday. He said the only 21st Century running back in the sphere of his skills and overwhelming dominance is Derrick Henry.

From Tramel's vantage point, Peterson was "as reliable of a big-time player as anybody" that played at Oklahoma — in any era — and speculated that if he graced the gridiron for OU in the 1960s, before they switched their offense to the wishbone, or for Southern Cal in the 1970s out of its famed I-formation, opponents would have whittled to nothing but atoms in the air grasping and flailing.

"He'd have carried 50 times a game and had 360 yards because he had unbelievable stamina; he never seemed to get tired," Tramel said.

That ability was innate but also sharpened in the shadows and the sun — in the weight room, and on the grass and track, in the hours of the morning when less-motivated people dream of shortcuts.

"I'm 65 years old and confident in my manhood," Tramel prefaced his awe of A.D.'s yoked frame that turned media heads. "He had the best physique of any Sooner ever — wasn't any question about that."

Peterson prescribed the good old-fashioned grind. His method was indomitable, his results unrivaled.

"I probably shortchanged him on his work ethic," Walker decided. "Some of those stories are mythical."

Like, the time Peterson left everyone in his dust … without bending his knees.

"Everybody was dog tired, and this dude, both of his legs were cramping," Malcolm Kelly recalled Peterson during an offseason workout where legendary Oklahoma strength and conditioning coach Jerry Schmidt guided players from a lift to the track for 200-meter repeats. A cautious trainer (pointlessly) excused A.D. Kelly said his response was, " 'Whatever. I'm getting out here, doing my thing regardless.' "

Then, still amazed, Kelly said, "This dude, straight-legged, no exaggeration, he won every single rep in the 200s. Like, straight-legged, running like 'Tin Man,' and won every single rep. I will never forget that."

One of Lofton's favorites seared into his memory was the sight of Peterson practically levitating with triple-digit dumbbells clasped in his hands. Lofton said he never saw Peterson fatigued and placed him in "a completely different category" — 1-of-1 material — than all the "freaks" he came across in the NFL.

"We're jumping up on a 36-inch box and I was like, 'OK, I'll grab the 30s,' thinking I was doing something," Lofton recalled. "And A.D. walked over with hundreds. And I'm like, 'I know he's not about to do that. I know he must be about to do some lunges or something. There's no way he's about to jump up on this box' — and it was like he just floated, floated through the air with ease. It was just like, 'Wow.' "

Lofton added Peterson famously loved to "talk noise" to Schmidt, whose career began serving Tom Osborne at Nebraska and has involved teams that played in six national championship games, as well as seven Heisman Trophy winners. "He was like, 'That's all you got, 'Schmitty'? That's all you got!' And the rest of us were like, 'Hey, man, we're just trying to make it, dog.' But he always had another gear."

Except for once, when Peterson's humanness shook his teammates to their cores.

Part II: Oklahoma Sooners Phenom ~ Continued:

"Coach Schmitty was notorious for Junction Boy-type of old school workouts. He'd try to grind you up, spit you out, and truly break you down to build you up," explained Dotson, who played at OU from 2003-07 and is in his 14th season identifying talent in an NFL front office. "But Adrian? It never fazed him. It was a true God-given — touched by God — like the stamina he had, it was just, you were born with it.

"We would have early morning winter workouts, we're talking about 5 a.m., and there were different groups that went, and this one time, I think I was the second group behind Adrian's group, and he's throwing up and everybody was like 'Ahhh [man]! We are not gonna make it! Nobody!,' " Dotson cracked up. "Everybody was just sick to their stomachs — like, 'Man, if Adrian ain't making it, we are screwed!'"

The way A.D. operated on the field and in the weight room was unbelievable — even to players 3-to-4 years older than him such as Brown, who subscribed to the hype he heard from his family the moment Peterson gave him a reason. He did during a workout. Players were doing power presses, but Peterson wasn't completing the full movement. He was hang-cleaning the barbell and he did it 10 times in a row.

"I remember this good," Brown said. "Coach Schmitty came over and was like, 'Bro, you're doing it wrong. You've got to clean it then press it.' And without putting down the weight, he knocked out 10 more reps, cleaning then pressing. He re-corrected it right then and there with no wasted time, and it had to be about 235 on the bar. I'm like, 'Damn, he didn't even put that weight down! Who is this cat?' "

Allen Patrick, one of Peterson's contemporaries in the running backs room, transferred to Oklahoma from junior college in 2005 and credited A.D., who pushed him daily, for getting into the best condition in his life. "It was a struggle for me, but it wasn't for him! You know what I'm saying?" Patrick exclaimed.

"I always tell people there wasn't no easy workout. You either go in and you're going to fall off or you're going to barely make it, but to see Adrian and how he approached those workouts, there was something different about him," he said of Peterson foiling Schmitty's designs. "He had this different animal in him."

It was a hyper-focused relentlessness, and the memories of it will endure like his on-field legend.

"He loved pushing people. Just the process of, like I say, the process of what it takes to be a great football player — he enjoyed the process more than he enjoyed what it looked like on Saturday," Kelly commented. "That's what it looked like to me. That's what I experienced from him. I think Saturdays were always a byproduct of how much he exhausted himself in the process of preparing for the games."

As Dotson debriefed some of Peterson's feats that were footnotes in his journey when they happened but fantastically depict the greatness that made him a headline waiting to be written whenever he lugged the football, Dotson echoed the essence Nelson Peterson felt when he dubbed Adrian "All Day."

"His father, when he nicknamed him that, that is the truest nickname ever," Dotson expressed.

The All Day energy played a serious — sometimes humorous — role in Peterson's story. Once, Stoops wasn't pleased with the team's attendance in the classroom, so he laid down the hammer and made the players run stadium stairs at 4 a.m. The punishment, per se, didn't have the intended effect on Peterson.

"Coach Schmitty's wearing us out, and Adrian is going up and down these stairs like nothing is phasing him, and he is talking," Dotson said incredulously. " 'If this is the case, I ain't never going to class!'

"We were all pissed off at him, like, 'Hold on man! God! Argh!' " Dotson added. "I'm telling that story because when I think of Adrian, I think of — you know how you have wealthy people in the world and then you have the Top 1% of wealthy people in the world? That's [the class] I put Adrian in because we had an abundance of incredibly talented players on those teams, and brother, Adrian was the Top 1%."

'It's damn sure his DNA'

People petitioned Peterson to push for entry into the NFL after high school, but waiting was wise.

It allowed him to mature his skills and forge an important chapter of his legend in the NCAA. By his seventh game — in quicker fashion than any freshman at the time — Peterson broke 1,000 yards. His streak of nine consecutive 100-yard games to begin his career was the best by a freshman then and now.

Uniquely, Peterson kept redefining his own potential.

"He came into camp looking like a receiver the way his size was. He was lean, and I never had seen anything like it," said David Robinson, an Oklahoma WR in that era who is a prominent skills trainer.

"Everybody knows how angry he ran with the ball in his hands, but he was so fast," Robinson noted. "People did not give him enough credit for his speed. Like, Adrian was a 10.3, 10.2 guy on the track, weighing 220 pounds. So it was special to see him at his size outrun those angles when people were trying to catch him. Of course, it was impressive to see him be angry and run through guys and run them over and treat them like little kids — but outrunning those angles at his size was very, very impressive."

Peterson's body of work, from his physicality to his mentality to his box score abnormalities, was stunning. Packaged in a 6-foot-1, 220-pound build, his floor was high and his ceiling was incalculable.

"When I think about 'I am football,' I think about Adrian Peterson. Like, you don't want to say it's someone's identity, but it's damn sure his DNA," Dotson said about the running back who went on to play a decade-and-a-half in the league. "What we (scouts) would say about Adrian is that when 2-8 is on the field, he tilts the field in your favor. He is the 1% that tilts the field because the [talent gap] is by a slim margin — everybody has talented players. But when you have 2-8 out there, he actually tilts the field in your favor. We always say with players like him, the report writes itself. You don't have to think of a bunch of adjectives. You don't have to try to be creative. His report writes itself. That's how good he is."

Evaluations, like his statistics were stupendous — but they don't hold a candle to the moments he made.

One great scene as a Sooner played out in A.D.'s third game and provided an initial breakout — if you don't count him rushing for a "buck" and then 117 against Bowling Green and Houston — as he racked up 183 yards and a pair of touchdowns in a convincing win over Oregon. The visual of a specific play portrayed a phenom.

"There's a great picture around town that was photo'd and framed," Gundy recalled of a 40-yard touchdown trot by Peterson against the Ducks in 2004. "It literally looks like a horse coming around the corner of the Kentucky Derby, and there is Bob, Coach Stoops, his best friend — a guy named Matt McMillen (Oklahoma's longtime Director of Football Operations), and then Bob's best friend from Youngstown, Ohio, whose nickname was 'Snake' (his real name was Jim Braydich). The look on these three guys' faces was like, 'Holy [crap], what in the hell is going on right here.' It's the coolest picture ever."

Gundy added: "His buddy Snake used to say, 'Bob, when are you gonna let the Ferrari out the garage?' "

Another piece of Peterson's lore, of which anyone he's met corroborates is the grip of his handshake. Nelson Peterson, who I can confirm also has a firm clamp, quipped that his son is catching up because "As I get older, he still is getting stronger."

Tramel recalled, with a shudder in his voice, Peterson returning to Norman from the NFL to host a camp for children. Tramel never considered Peterson as the chatty type, "But that day he was happy to see several of us" in the media cohort. Smiling, the pro back approached the scribe, and when he did, Tramel was worried that Peterson "cracked five bones with his handshake."

Tramel noted it was "the only handshake I ever experienced that was anything like Danny Hodge."

"They say [Hodge] could take an apple, just squeeze an apple into mush. I mean, I don't think that's a wives' tale. I think he went around doing that," Tramel sized up A.D. to the legendary Olympic wrestler. "You sort of just winced as you started to shake his hand cause you knew it was going to hurt. I don't know if he knew he was doing it — no idea — but shaking hands with Adrian was something to behold."

It's one of Adrian's idiosyncrasies in common with Nelson — something perceptible that he acquired when he was young before his father was incarcerated. Although Nelson's ability to impact Adrian's growth didn't cease when they were separated, it took on an alternative form. After college games that Nelson was fortunate to watch on television, they got on the phone, and he critiqued his son. Adrian listened to what he did well and what he did poorly, and clinged to the words of his father, his first coach.

"I tell people all the time, Adrian would never cheat you out of anything," Nelson said.

And so, as the legend goes, Peterson turned to the grindstone. He leaned on teammates and coaches and friends and family, including his mom Bonita and stepfather Frankie Jackson and overcame adversity, and he looked forward to the day Nelson finally would see him play for the first time since grade school.

That moment, described by Gundy as "an unbelievably special day" arrived Oct. 14, 2006, in Oklahoma's sixth game of the season and on home grass against Iowa State. Peterson put on an absolute show with 183 rushing yards, two touchdowns and 45 receiving yards. But a fluky finish to a 53-yard dash to the paint with 6:38 left in the game made it Peterson's last until the Fiesta Bowl, due to a broken collarbone.

Part II: Oklahoma Sooners Phenom ~ Continued:

Watching Adrian perform was "very, very, very emotional," Nelson recalled.

The build-up and significance of the moment touched Peterson's teammates, as well.

"That same week, his dad came to practice and, under the situation, we had never seen his father in person," said Dotson, adding Adrian always spoke highly of Nelson. "There was a lot of fanfare around our program at the time, and we were used to seeing people at practice and so we're at practice this (one) day, and we're like, 'Man, who is that new recruit? You see that new recruit?' I swear to you, everybody was just whispering, like, 'Damn, that dude looks good. What position does he play?' Everybody's chiming and then we see Adrian go run up to him."

They hugged one another, Dotson said, and then everybody freaked out, " 'Oh, [snap]! That's his dad!' "

The episode that weekend was electric — and not because the Sooners took care of business, 34-9, but because Nelson was there — and Adrian's eyes gleamed, " 'Yeah, my dad's going to see me work.' "

"I'm in ministry now, and one of the things is the connection between you and your father — it's a special bond," said Lofton, the former linebacker. "And to never have your father physically in a building, and then he's coming for the first time in your life, it's hard to truly put into words."

Kelly echoed, "I don't know if I could put into words how special it was for him. He had just great reverence for his dad, man, and that was from the very beginning, just all these

stories about how his dad used to push him, and even when he would talk to his dad on the phone."

Twenty years later, Nelson remembered that day as "a blessing."

"The atmosphere of being there," he said, was overwhelming. "Seeing my son on that field participating with that OU uniform on, you know, there's so many great running backs that have been through there."

But only one Adrian Peterson.

'The heart of a lion'

When his team had an off week in 2003, Kelly drove from Longview to Palestine to make his own judgement on a player that was doing things that seemingly toed the line between myth and reality.

"I walked away like, 'OK, yeah, this dude is, I mean he's the best player I've ever seen,' " Kelly said about watching Peterson run wild in high school, busting whatever doubt there was that he was make-believe.

Fast-forward to 2005, Kelly's freshman season, and his conviction somehow surpassed his peek at A.D.

"I just remember going out there that first practice and seeing him touch the ball for the first time, and I was like, 'OK, a dude that size isn't supposed to move like that,' number one. And then when I saw him finish, just his intent every time he touched the practice field, I was like, 'OK, I think I'm doing it, but I'm not really doing it.' Like, this is the cream of the crop, the very best, this is what it looks like," Kelly said. "I knew then in college, I was like, I'll never play with anybody else as good as this dude."

Kelly said confidently, "He has to go into the conversation as arguably one of the best players to ever do it. I think if you want to have that conversation and A.D. isn't in it, you're doing a disservice to the game."

Plain and simple, Peterson was a generational talent. Williams, who was picked 4th overall out of Oklahoma in 2010 and has more Pro Bowl accolades this century than any o-lineman, would know.

Blocking for him was a singular endeavor.

"It's definitely very, very different and the reason being is the confidence you get when you got 28 behind you, you know, like, 'I don't have to dominate this block,' " Williams said. "You know he's not getting taken down with an arm tackle — guys don't even want to stick they arm out when he flies through that hole. They'd rather live to fight another down instead of getting their arm ripped off."

Of course, avoiding A.D. wasn't an answer, just delaying the inevitable toll he administered.

His foray into college football was unprecedented. The 2004 Sooners had über experience, with 10 players picked in the NFL Draft the following spring, but a ripe East Texas legend was their pacesetter. They rode the teenager's impact to 12-0 and a subsequent appearance in the National Championship game (the Orange Bowl that year) where USC's dynasty, led by Matt Leinart, interrupted a phenomenon.

Peterson didn't perceive that bump in the road as such, though, because of his wiring.

"He doesn't see a loss. He doesn't see defeat. He doesn't see anybody that's able to do anything remotely close to what he can do. Whether they can or not, he doesn't even see it," Ingram detailed.

"It's almost like he's delusional, but then it ultimately turns out to be reality, so it's hard to put into words, but the world has pretty much had a chance to see and it's the reason why he is who he is and has accomplished the things that he has," Ingram added. "Because to go to the lengths that he's gone in life, you've got to be almost crazy to even attempt and try to do the things that he's done and to sustain and try to maintain, consistently, who he's been throughout. It ain't nothing that's coached. It ain't nothing that's — it's just something inside of him. And it's been there since the first time I saw him."

It resides in his chest cavity. It pumps his All Day energy. It's the strongest muscle in his body.

"He got the heart of a lion. He got the heart of a lion," Williams said twice, solemnly. "I always tell people, man, Adrian has got an infectious smile, got a firm handshake, he's a great guy to be around, very friendly. But he's been through a lot, you know. His life has had a ton of roller coasters from childhood all the way up and through college. … He went through 10 times what I would think a human being is supposed to be able to handle. And so, in my opinion, just seeing what he had to battle through — and seeing the product he put on the field and seeing the way he represented himself — I think it just all comes back to his character and his heart. His heart is what propelled him past his athletic abilities."

His heart, and his trust in the man above.

"The biggest thing of all is his faith, which he expresses and speaks on, but I think people think it's cliché," Ingram said. "They think that it's just something that he's saying because a lot of people just say they want to make sure that they give all the honor to God. But if you look back and you read back, you'll see that he has always and forever said it. But being a person who's close to him, I know for a fact that his faith is unmeasurable and it's a testament to all the things that he's been able to do and accomplish because people can only dream about a lot of the things that he does, and just as normal as breathing."

Lofton said, "God blessed him with so much ability," and he honored it.

Like cribbing a handoff, Peterson took his gifts in stride, bobbed his head and ran like he was destined.

Part III: Minnesota Vikings Legacy

Twenty-six years ago, a father helped his son manifest his football immortality.

"I remember being incarcerated in Seagoville, Texas, and Adrian came to visit me, and he brought some pictures and some track medals because he excelled in track — this is before football had even taken off for him," Nelson Peterson reflected. "I told him, 'You're one of the best running backs in the state of Texas that no one has heard of' because he was at one school then he transferred to another school, so we were just trying to get him back on track. And we sat down and we put together a four-step program.

"This four-step program was to be the best running back in Texas, to be the best running back in college, to be the best running back in the NFL, and to go into the Hall of Fame," Nelson said. "But I must say, we missed one step — and that one step we missed is being in the Ring of Honor for the Minnesota Vikings."

Adrian, who was 15 when he zealously showed his first coach, his dad, the progress he was making in track, sprinted toward the plan he wrote down with a preordained passion until it was totally realized.

On Nov. 9, 'PETERSON' and his jersey No. '28' will be fixed permanently along the upper-bowl facade at U.S. Bank Stadium during halftime on Monday Night Football. Nelson said he will have goosebumps when his son is the 24th player and 29th person to earn the franchise's highest honor. His enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame is inevitable, as well, and may happen in 2027, "Lord willing," Nelson said.

That's the overwhelming consensus. That one of the all-time top players and arguably the No. 1 running back to step foot on the gridiron will slink his arms, the same ones that chucked more than a few defenders off to score 120 rushing touchdowns and cradled the ball for 14,918 rushing yards, into a Gold Jacket the first year he is eligible. Those totals are fifth in NFL annals and were built on franchise records of 97 rushing scores (45 more than the next two players) and 11,747 yards (nearly 5,000 more than second place) set in 123 games over parts of 10 seasons (2007-16) for the Purple.

The stats never tell the whole story, but they do verify Peterson toted the rock differently. For one, his longevity was special. He ran 200-plus times in 10 different seasons — only Emmitt Smith (14), Frank Gore (12) and Curtis Martin (11) were workhorses for longer. Also, he boasted elite efficiency.

He rushed for a new set of downs 717 times or on 22.2% of his attempts; Smith holds the top spot for runs that moved the sticks (1,028) since 1977, according to Stathead. Walter Payton ranks second in that category with 743 (excluding his first two seasons, which were prior to the stat's coverage). Peterson ranks ninth but finished just 26 below "Sweetness." Moreover, Peterson's percentage of chain-moving carries is fifth among backs in the Top 10 after Marcus Allen (24.3), Eric Dickerson (24.2), Barry Sanders (23.7) and Smith (23.3).

Additionally, Peterson in 2012 became the seventh player to run for two grand in a season (the count is up to nine now), and he remains the closest to rewriting Dickerson's record of 2,105 yards. He came up just shy, 365 days after he went under the knife to repair a complete tear of the ACL and MCL in his left knee.

"To fall behind another Texas boy by 8 yards — it's not bad," Nelson quipped.

Adrian's proud father recalled bumping into Dickerson when they were in Hawai'i for the Pro Bowl. Nelson invited Dickerson to lunch and the Pro Football Hall of Famer obliged. Nelson said they each brought a friend and reminisced on the nerve-wracking scene of Peterson running for 199 in the 2012 season finale. His monster performance propelled the Vikings to the playoffs, but it didn't clear the bar.

"He was just telling me how he was sweating and his friends were calling him saying, 'Hey, man, what if the game goes to overtime — do those yards count?' He was like, 'Hell yeah, those yards count!' " Nelson's face lit up remembering Dickerson's fear of Adrian surpassing his 1984 mark. "Straight out, he didn't want Adrian to break his record, which is understandable, being the great running back that he is."

Nelson added, "But it was a blessing to be able to have such an outstanding season."

That's one way to describe it. Another way is the greatest season for any player at any position, accounting for the fact it was a comeback that defied medicine, science and the wildest imaginations.

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 21st 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.

Part III: Minnesota Vikings Legacy ~ Continued:

'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 1,200th 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), 11th (Patrick Willis) and 14th (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."

Part III: Minnesota Vikings Legacy ~ Continued:

'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 7th 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."

Part III: Minnesota Vikings Legacy ~ Continued:

'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."

Part III: Minnesota Vikings Legacy ~ Continued:

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."

Former #Vikings RB Adrian Peterson on his “what if” of his career:

“Little situation I had in Minnesota with everything with my son. That year being pretty much negated. Then how everything kinda ended with Minnesota I felt had those things hadn’t happened, I probably would’ve… pic.twitter.com/IuZciX9IFm

— VikingzFanPage (@vikingzfanpage) October 15, 2026