Minnesota Vikings?running back Adrian Peterson suffered a torn meniscus in right knee during Sunday’s?
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Head coach Mike Zimmer announced the injury on his Monday press conference and he said the team, doctors, training staff and Peterson are going over all the options available to them.
Green Bay lost 17-14 to the rival Vikings in Minnesota on Sunday night.
Zimmer recorded his weekly appearance on the show before addressing the media on Monday.
But fears the 31-year-old had torn his anterior cruciate ligament proved unfounded and Zimmer said there was, as yet, no timescale for his absence from the team. He had to be carried off the field by trainers to the team’s locker room after he wasn’t able to put any weight on his right leg.
With Peterson out, the Vikings will need to rely on Jerick McKinnon and Matt Asiata moving forward. Peterson might miss just a week, however, Zimmer is not clear how long he will actually be out, according to ESPN. Afterwards, Peterson was seen wearing a large knee brace and was walking on crutches. He underwent surgery and made a remarkable recovery, starting all 16 games in 2012 and rushing for a career-high 2,097 yards en route to winning the MVP award. He’s been an ineffective running back to this point of the season, though much of the blame falls on a porous offensive line that’s failed to open running lanes.
He wasn’t happy about the production, or lack thereof, by the offense for which he calls the plays. “I think when you look at how you lay out a game and how it unfolds, we’ve played in two games now (and) I think the Jacksonville game definitely getting behind, particularly in the time of possession in the first half, we had to play a little differently than we wanted to going into the game”.
“We just stood up, I mean every personnel group we brought in was getting exhausted, we had a couple of guys get beat up and we just kept playing”.
Injury experts have speculated that Peterson could be sidelined anywhere from two weeks to three months, depending on whether he needs surgery and whether that procedure would be to trim the meniscus or reconstruct it.
“Offensively, we’ve got a lot of work to do”, veteran guard T.J. Lang said.
“We will try to find a way to win”, Zimmer said of his Week 3 game plan. “So we’ve got to get better”. A meniscus tear doesn’t necessarily mean the player will miss significant time. The 2015 National Football League rushing leader, who had just 19 carries for 31 yards in Week 1 against the Tennessee Titans, was injured on his longest run of the night.
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If you want to know how important it is to run the football, consider the results when the combination of Lacy and Starks rush at least 20 times. We got pretty good continuity.
