The Washington Redskins roster is progressively getting younger and more agile, as players continue to come in with more range and a wider set of skills than we’ve seen in Washington for a while. Take players like RB Antonio Gibson, or WR Isaiah Wright — both have a positional tag before their name, but coaches have already said that they plan to move them across the offense and plug them into holes where they see fit.
Then you have veteran players on the Redskins roster who do one thing, and they do one thing extremely well. The person in question is Adrian Peterson, who is as good of a downhill runner as there’s ever been in the NFL, but the team may be changing around him.
ESPN already pegged AP to be the next big roster cut for the Redskins, but NBC Sports’ Peter King doesn’t think it will be that easy to supplant him from his role as the lead back.
“You walk into camp and somebody’s got to knock out Adrian Peterson,” King said, via NBC Sports Washington. “He’s like Rocky Balboa. No matter how many shots he took that guy’s not going to be knocked out.”
It may be easy to count out the 35-year-old back who has a lot of miles on his legs but based on his play alone, there’s no reason to think that Peterson is slowing down any time soon. In 2018 he came to Washington during fall camp and proceeded to rush for over 1,000 yards; in 2019 he stepped in for an injured Derrius Guice and started more than 10 games, totaling just under 900 yards. While everyone else in the Redskins’ RB room remains either injured or unproven, AP has remained a constant workhorse.
“That’s the same thing when I see Adrian Peterson. Year after year,” King said, “it’s not like he’s hanging on by a thread, he’s playing good football.”
The team may be changing around him, but there’s no guarantee that Peterson will have to change with it to succeed. There’s also no guarantee that someone will be able to knock him out of the RB1 role any time soon, which may be just fine for the Redskins.
[vertical-gallery id=35108]