Vikings' Adrian Peterson Can Beat Cowboys' Pass Rush

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. -- Adrian Peterson has been watching the Dallas Cowboys his whole life. He had a Deion Sanders poster on his wall when he was a kid. He got nervous the first time he met Sanders and Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith. He's got relatives he says honestly don't know which way to root this Sunday -- for him or for their beloved Cowboys. The Cowboys have been a part of Peterson's life longer than the Vikings have. So yeah, he was watching them beat the Eagles on Saturday night.

And what was Peterson thinking as he watched Dallas crush the Eagles? As he watched DeMarcus Ware and Anthony Spencer savagely attack the quarterback from around the edge on almost every single play?

"They haven't played the Vikings," Peterson said with a smile. "I was thinking, 'They haven't played against the Vikings this year.'"That'll change Sunday, and Peterson is the biggest reason things are about to change for the Cowboys. Sure, Dallas is the hottest team this side of the Hotel del Coronado. And yes, it's all for real. They're loaded on offense, loaded on defense and playing with Texas-sized confidence. But all of those things are true about the Vikings, too, and they're bringing something Sunday that the Cowboys haven't seen during this run they're on: A power running game.

"That's always our plan," Vikings offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell said. "We know that we're a strong running team. We've been that for a long time here, and we'd love to be able to establish that and get that going from the get-go. That would take pressure off of everybody, if we're getting four yards a pop against an outstanding defense. But I don't think that's going to surprise them. I'm sure that's what they're thinking, because that's what we do."

Yes, the Cowboys undoubtedly know this. Many of them have surely drafted Adrian Peterson very high in their own fantasy football leagues over the past several seasons. But they haven't seen it -- not lately, at least. Of the Cowboys last eight games, seven were against teams in the bottom half of the league in rushing offense. The only one that wasn't was in New Orleans, where Dallas got up big early and the Saints abandoned their sixth-ranked rushing attack for their seventh-ranked passing attack in an effort to come back.

None of this is meant to indicate that the Cowboys can't stop the run. They ranked fourth in the league in that department, allowing just 90.5 rush yards per game. But they didn't face a back as good as Peterson, and they only played three teams (Carolina, New Orleans and Kansas City) with higher-ranked rush offenses than Minnesota's. The Vikings' dream would be to run the ball so successfully that they don't even have to expose Brett Favre to Ware and Spencer -- the two men Bevell described as "the flamethrowers around the edge."

"If we could hand it to (Peterson) every time and get positive yards, that would be a great thing for our offense," Bevell said. "If we handed it to him 50 times and he got four yards a carry, I think we'd be very happy at the end of the game. But I think we know probably how the game's going to go."

Which is to say that just because the Vikings have Favre and Sidney Rice and Percy Harvin, and just because the Cowboys are used to sending Ware and Spencer on maniacal rushes against teams that can't or don't run the ball, the Vikings don't think Dallas will game-plan for them any differently than anybody else has.

"I think the thing that was constant was that teams were always going to come in and play to defeat the run," Vikings coach Brad Childress said.

The question is whether they can accomplish that against a back as dynamic and powerful as Peterson. Dallas' defense isn't all about Ware and Spencer, of course. Vikings coaches and players have spoken reverently in recent days about nose tackle Jay Ratliff and linebacker Keith Brooking and their ability to defend on the inside. But all the talk was about how those guys function in a blitzing, pass-rushing defense. That's because that's all anybody's seen from the Cowboys lately, because it's all they've had to do while playing against teams that don't run the ball very well.

That's where Peterson comes in, as something the Cowboys haven't had to deal with in a while, if all year. And he's up for it.

"If it takes us running the ball 25 times to get a W, fine," Peterson said. "If it takes us throwing the ball 50 times to get a W, it's whatever it takes to win. At the end of the day, if we're playing next week, it's not going to be 'Oh, Peterson had this many yards,' or 'Brett threw for this many yards.' It's going to be 'The Vikings made it, and they're playing in the NFC Championship Game.' Whichever way works best, I hope that's the way we go."

There's no way to know which way that will be. But considering what the Cowboys have been doing lately, and what they haven't been forced to do lately, a heavy dose of Peterson is probably the answer.