Historic feats accent a day to remember
Years from now, we will look back on Nov. 4, 2007, the all-important ninth Sunday of the NFL’s 88th season, and say with no small measure of pride, “We were there, in front of our TV screens, watching the events of that historic day unfold dramatically before us.”
That’s right. We saw Minnesota’s Adrian Peterson rush for 296 yards and San Diego’s Antonio Cromartie return a missed field-goal try 109 yards in the same game.
That means two neon-glow league records -- one unbreakable; you cannot return a kick for more than 109 yards -- were set in four quarters of football between the 3-5 Vikings and the 4-4 Chargers. If New England-Indianapolis was “Super Bowl 41.5,” as the weeklong hype had it, all Super Bowls without decimal points should have such warmup acts.
The Vikings’ 35-17 victory over the Chargers was the local television lead-in to New England 24, Indianapolis 20 in “The Game in Which Darkness Rallied to Overcome Light (And, No, There Was No Electrical Blackout Inside the RCA Dome).” So before Bill Belichick’s charcoal-gray personality triumphed over the almost-too-symbolically white-helmeted Colts, Southern California saw two flashes of incandescence, although Chargers fans could have managed well enough with one.
Minnesota rookie Peterson at last answered the question, “Wonder what the kid could do if Brad Childress ever got with the program and turned him loose?” Given 30 carries in his eighth professional game, Peterson surpassed Jamal Lewis’ single-game rushing record of 295 yards.
Peterson had 293 yards after 29 carries and less than a minute to go. At that point, it was even money that Childress would take Peterson out of the game and give the next handoff to Chester Taylor.
After that, the next most likely option was Childress’ telling his quarterback, Brooks Bollinger, to take a knee, and then take another.
But in the second-biggest upset inside the Metrodome on Sunday, Childress showed he had a sense of history. (And in 2007, every single Vikings victory qualifies as important Minnesota history.) The coach kept the kid in the game, gave him the ball one more time, and Peterson zig-zagged up the middle for the three yards he needed.
There it was: 296 yards.
It is interesting to note that before 2000, the single-game record was 275 yards, set by Walter Payton in 1977. In the league’s first 80 seasons, no player had rushed for more than 275 yards in a game.
In the last eight years, three players have eclipsed the 275-yard mark: Cincinnati’s Corey Dillon with 278 yards in 2000, Baltimore’s Lewis in 2003 and Peterson in 2007.
If this were baseball, someone would be demanding an investigation.
Also interesting: On the day Lewis lost his record, he produced one of the more economical rushing performances in memory. Lewis netted only 37 yards in 20 carries during Cleveland’s 33-30 overtime victory over Seattle, yet scored four touchdowns. Those touchdown runs covered two yards, one yard, two yards and one yard.
Also on the same afternoon, Clinton Portis ran for 196 yards in Washington’s 23-20 overtime victory over the New York Jets -- and couldn’t crack the top three NFL stories of the day. Portis gained 196 yards in 36 carries . . . and finished 100 yards behind the top rusher of the day!
The passage of Week 9 means every league team has played at least half its regular-season schedule. This is the NFL season’s halftime intermission. And at the break, this is what we know about the league:
1) New England (9-0) and Indianapolis (7-1) have reduced the rest of the season to the solitary issue of which team, the Patriots or the Colts, gets home-field advantage in the playoffs. That’s all that matters the rest of the way: which team will stage the AFC championship game in January, which evidently will be designated “Super Bowl 41.75.”
2) The NFC North has miraculously transformed from the NFL’s land of the drab to the league’s most happening division. Brett Favre is still racking up 300-yard games and the Green Bay Packers are 7-1! Matt Millen is still employed and the Detroit Lions are 6-2! The Vikings have the most exciting rookie running back since Eric Dickerson! And Childress is letting him run with the ball!
3) When Louisiana State Coach Les Miles denigrated the caliber of West Coast football last summer, he must have been talking about professional West Coast football.
Right now, none of the eight teams in the AFC and NFC West divisions has a winning record. San Diego, despite its rotten start and inability to stop Peterson, is tied for first place in the AFC West with a 4-4 mark. Seattle, despite giving up 364 yards passing to Cleveland quarterback Derek Anderson, is atop the NFC West at 4-4.
This is the state of things at a glance: In three AFC West-NFC North matchups Sunday, the NFC North was 3-0, including Green Bay’s come-from-behind 33-22 triumph at Kansas City and Detroit’s 44-7 rout of Denver.
In those games, Favre threw for 360 yards, his fifth 300-yard-plus performance in six games, and Detroit’s Shaun Rogers might have set the NFL record for “Fastest Almost-70-Yard Dash by a 340-Pound Defensive Tackle” with his 66-yard touchdown rumble after intercepting a pass by the Broncos’ Patrick Ramsey.
The Broncos, 3-5 and in third place in the AFC West behind the Chargers and Chiefs, would rank as the season’s most disappointing team if not for the Cincinnati Bengals and their sudden recovery from a three-year spell of amnesia.
In startling un-Bengals-like fashion, Cincinnati had strung together seasons of 8-8, 11-5 and 8-8 before 2007. And that last 8-8 had been accomplished despite a breakaway run of Bengals trying to trade their tiger stripes for prison stripes.
This had fooled some people into tabbing the Bengals as preseason dark-horse contenders. Half a season later, they are 2-6 after Sunday’s 33-21 defeat at Buffalo.
Apparently, belief in the Bengals was a more overrated concept than chemistry, character or composure.
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Rushing to greatness
Best single-game rushing performances in NFL history with yardage, player, number of attempts in parentheses, team, opponent and date:
*--* 296 ADRIAN PETERSON (30), Minnesota vs. San Diego, Nov. 4, 2007 295 JAMAL LEWIS (30), Baltimore vs. Cleveland, Sept. 14, 2003 278 COREY DILLON (22), Cincinnati vs. Denver, Oct. 22, 2000 275 WALTER PAYTON (40), Chicago vs. Minnesota, Nov. 20, 1977 273 O.J. SIMPSON (29), Buffalo vs. Detroit, Nov. 25, 1976 266 SHAUN ALEXANDER (35), Seattle vs. Oakland, Nov. 11, 2001 251 MIKE ANDERSON (37), Denver vs. New Orleans, Dec. 3, 2000 *--*
Source: Associated Press