Adrian Peterson May Have Indeed Broken the Rushing Record

After tearing his ACL and MCL on December 26, of 2011, Adrian Peterson had one of the best seasons of his career! Coming up just 9 yards short of the NFL single-season record for the most rushing yards (2,105), set in 1984 by Eric Dickerson. His historic season, earned him the NFL Offensive Player of the Year and the NFL MVP awards.

But according to sportige.com, there’s a chance that Adrian Peterson may have broken the rushing record after all. A 15% chance to be exact!

But did the measurements of the NFL, giving half a yard rushes a full value – either 0 or 1 and so on, keep Peterson from breaking the record? According to Jeremy Scheff, there’s a 15% chance Peterson actually ran for more than what Dickerson did in 1984.

The assumption Scheff used was that the length of every rushing attempt could fall anywhere within -0.5 and +0.5 yards of the reported total; for example, a carry reported as 6 yards could just as easily be 5.7 yards or 6.4 yards or whatever.

This means that there is approximately a 15% chance that Adrian Peterson actually broke Dickerson’s record, but it was not noticed due errors accumulated by rounding the lengths of rushes to integer values.

Clear as mud? Well, check out his full story to get the mathematical specifics.