There was some background chatter over the course of the past few days that Washington Redskins head coach Jay Gruden doesn’t like Adrian Peterson’s north-south running style.
Part of this stemmed from the broadcast that aired the Redskins’ loss to Dallas in Week 2. Since, Gruden has told the media that’s not a fair breakdown, according to Ethan Cadeaux of NBC Sports Washington.
“You want north-south running backs. I don’t think you want east-west backs, that’s for sure,” Gruden said. “[Peterson] is a north-south runner….when he gets going north-south, what that does is creates a physical mentality for our offense. Our linemen love it, and it opens up our play-action passes. We do love north-south backs.”
Gruden went on to explain that what the north-south style does do though is limit what the offense can run because defenses know Peterson isn’t leaking out of the backfield and making a difference in the passing game.
There isn’t anything wrong with a coach defining one of his player’s skillsets and pointing out how it impacts the plays available to them out of the playbook.
Granted, this comes after Gruden made AP inactive in Week 1, which compounds the whole situation a bit. But like last year, the two shouldn’t have a massive problem making it work from here.
