You’ll see lots of coverage and hear plenty of discussion Monday about the way Arizona intercepted Minnesota quarterback Brett Favre twice and limited him to 275 mostly meaningless passing yards in Sunday night’s 30-17 victory. You might even hear more whispers about the Week 12 slide.


To me, however, what you saw Sunday night is what happens when the Vikings can’t run the ball.

Two weeks ago, they chose not to run when Chicago left its passing lanes wide open. Sunday, they couldn’t run when they tried. I’ll have more on this later in our “Third and one” segment, but for now let’s make it known that Arizona held Vikings tailback Adrian Peterson to the second-lowest rushing total of his career.

Peterson managed 19 yards on 13 attempts. One of his runs went for 11 yards, meaning he gained 8 yards on his other 12 attempts. Below are the five weakest performances of Peterson’s career, courtesy ESPN's Stats & Information. The Vikings are 2-3 in those games.

December 2007: 3 yards at San Francisco*
Sunday: 19 yards at Arizona
December 2007: 27 yards against Washington
October 2008: 32 yards at New Orleans*
December 2007: 32 yards at Denver
*Victory