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Adrian Peterson: ‘In my mind, I feel like I have a lot of years left’

New Orleans Saints running back Adrian Peterson

New Orleans Saints running back Adrian Peterson was at the team’s facility on Tuesday to make his first real public comments since signing a free agent contract last month.

A future Hall of Famer, Peterson saw the Minnesota Vikings decline his option for the 2017 season prior to the start of free agency. He then had to wait a few long weeks before finally inking a deal with New Orleans.

At 32 years old and coming off an injury-plagued 2016 season that saw him miss all but three games, most figure that Peterson’s best days are behind him. Heck, there’s surely a scenario in play here that suggests he will be the backup to Mark Ingram in New Orleans (more on that here).

Despite this, Peterson still seems to think he has a lot of good football left in him.

That’s a pretty stunning proclamation to make. Most running backs tend to slow down once they hit the 30-year-old plateau. And having played in a grand total of 20 games since the end of the 2013 season, Peterson himself seems to be on the back-end of his career.

Peterson may believe he has a lot of good football left in him, but the two-year, $7 million deal New Orleans handed him seems to suggest that the Saints are looking at him as a short-term option. The deal called for $3.5 million guaranteed and enables the Saints to get out from under it with a mere $1.3 million cap hit following the 2017 season.

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