Adrian Peterson will get more opportunities with the Cardinals, but it won’t matter

Adrian Peterson’s tenure in New Orleans was a short one. Four games, 27 carries, 81 yards, and zero touchdowns. Now he’ll get the opportunity to underwhelm with an Arizona Cardinals team desperate for tailback help.

On Tuesday, the Cardinals traded a conditional pick to the Saints to pick up the 32-year-old tailback. He’ll join a depth chart that includes Andre Ellington and Kerwynn Williams. He’ll battle for touches with fellow 32-year-old (and former 2,000-yard rusher) Chris Johnson.

He will remain largely irrelevant.

Peterson will have more opportunities to impress than he would have in New Orleans, but for a worse team and a cheesecloth offensive line. His playoff hopes — theoretically important from a player who has never appeared in a Super Bowl — have gone from meager to bare bones. While he wasn’t helping his legacy with the Saints, he may actively hurt it in Arizona.

Peterson is a future Hall of Famer who reset expectations for NFL players recovering from catastrophic injury over the course of nine productive seasons with the Vikings. In 2012, he came back from a torn ACL and MCL to become just the seventh player to break the 2,000-yard plateau. In 2015, after child abuse charges cost him all but one game of the previous season, he rallied back to lead the league in rushing at age 30. 2017 provided him one more chance for a miraculous comeback — but time has finally come to collect its debt on a tailback who once looked ageless.

Peterson’s biggest contribution to the 2017 NFL season so far is the death stare he gave Saints coach Sean Payton after getting just six carries in New Orleans’ season opener.

A look at his impact on the field suggests no real reason to utilize him more. In his past two seasons — 2017 and an injury shortened 2016 — he’s racked up 64 carries for 153 yards. That 2.4 yard per carry average would be the league’s worst among qualified tailbacks in 2017 if not for Paul Perkins’ pathetic 1.9 number anchoring the back end of the list. Peterson has caught five passes in that seven-game span for a total of 12 yards. He’s played at sub-replacement player levels since ‘16.

And now he’s going to a worse team than he’d played for in New Orleans. Per Football Outsiders, Peterson is downgrading from the league’s 11th-best run blocking offensive line to its 24th. Johnson, a reasonable comparison for Peterson given their age and histories, has gained just 2.5 yards per touch since being brought back into the fold this September.

Peterson will get more opportunities — a look at the Arizona depth chart backs that up — but they may just be extended chances to run into rapidly-closing holes and be swallowed up like so much krill in the baleen mouths of opposing defenses.

There’s a chance Peterson rebounds — that his ineffective two seasons were the product of rust, and that more field work is the key to unlocking the player who earned All-Pro honors seven times with the Vikings. Given his supporting cast and advancing age, it’s just a minuscule one. Even if he does, he could find himself in a similar situation he had in New Orleans — taking a backseat to a younger player once David Johnson returns to full strength.