Adrian Peterson Is Heading to Arizona

The Cardinals have traded a conditional draft pick to the Saints for Adrian Peterson, ESPN’s Dianna Russini reported Tuesday, which makes sense, because a lot of people go to Arizona to retire.

After Peterson signed a two-year, $7 million deal this offseason, his stint in New Orleans was a disappointing affair for all parties. In his four games in the Big Easy, he carried the ball just 27 times for 81 rushing yards. That four-game stretch is worse than his per-game average in Minnesota, where he averaged 20 carries for 96 yards over the first decade of his career. Peterson is the only one who didn’t see this coming. He fell to third on the Saints’ depth chart behind Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara and was unhappy with his role as early as Week 1, when he tried to stare holes through Saints head coach Sean Payton’s skull.

Now Peterson heads to Arizona and joins a team still reeling from the loss of Swiss army machete David Johnson to a dislocated wrist in Week 1. Without him, Arizona’s running game is dead last in the league in yards (259) and yards per carry (2.6) and tied for last in rushing first downs (14). Arizona’s leading rusher is Chris Johnson, who it re-signed after David Johnson got hurt. But CJ2K is more likely to live to be 2,000 years old than he is to reach 2,000 total yards again. Nobody else on the Cardinals roster has even cracked 50 rushing yards this season, so if Peterson has anything left in the tank, he will get to prove it in Arizona.