In ’09, the Vikings had a Relative ANY/A of +2.05, easily the best passing game the franchise has produced in the last decade. In fact, the only other time in the last ten years that Minnesota had an above-average ANY/A was last year, when Peterson rushed for just 72 yards in three games.
Most of his time in Minnesota, though, the team’s passing attack has been below-average — or outright bad. For example, in 2012, Peterson rushed for 2,097 yards. That represented 17.9% of his career total, and it came when the Vikings had a Relative ANY/A of -0.94. Overall Peterson has a weighted average RANY/A — i.e., the Vikings RANY/A in each season of Peterson’s career, weighted by the number of rushing yards Peterson had — for his career of -0.52. Take a look.
Two years ago, I looked at which running backs played with the best passing games. I used the same formula described above, where I calculated, for each running back, his team’s average weighted RANY/A. I have re-run the numbers through the 2016 season for the top 150 leaders in rushing yards.
With an average RANY/A of -0.52, Peterson has the third-worst RANY/A of any running back in the top 20 in career rushing yards, behind only Walter Payton and Steven Jackson.
What do you think?