Patrick Peterson 1 year 10M

His contract and value are at an odd middle ground — a player with his resume would typically go for a bit more, but someone with his recent history of play wouldn’t command nearly as much money. The underlying numbers from his past two years of play aren’t pretty.

In 2019, coming off a suspension for PED usage, Peterson earned a PFF grade of 68.6, ranking 41st of 115 cornerbacks. Last year, he ranked 83rd with a grade of 55.2. His total coverage numbers look a bit better compared to the competition, but not much. In passer rating allowed, he ranked 71st among cornerbacks, and in the more meaningful measure of yards per coverage snap allowed, he ranked 40th.

Grade is a more predictive measure than passer rating on targets or yards per cover snap — but it’s good to see he didn’t give up as many yards as the biggest doomsayers might think.

One reason his grade is low has to do with penalties. Including declined or offsetting penalties, Peterson committed 14 penalties and led all corners in the NFL in penalty rate and total penalties. In fact, no defender committed as many penalties as Peterson did last year. As a result, he ranked second in total penalty yards given up and his 114 yards given up due to penalties drop his yards per cover snaps to 51st.

Given that framework, it’s tough to justify the $10 million the Vikings spent on Peterson, whose last two years have showcased his declining play. That’s particularly true when comparing him to other cornerbacks who signed with new teams in this round of free agency.

But, like with Tomlinson, there’s more to the story. Peterson was tasked with shadowing opposing receivers for the first 11 weeks of the season, taking on Terry McLaurin, D.K. Metcalf, DeVante Parker and Stefon Diggs, among others.

Peterson played more snaps in man coverage than anyone else in the NFL last year, and it was clear that this wasn’t a good fit for him. Entering the NFL as one of the most athletic corners to ever go through the combine process, it must have been tempting for defensive coordinator Vance Joseph to give Peterson the lion’s share of work in the Cardinals defense, especially after a remarkable 2018 season and a forgivable 2019 downturn.

But Peterson’s age caught up to him and he lost a step, especially against speedy receivers.

This was a persistent issue last year, and he gave up 170 yards just on targets 20 yards in the air or more, seventh-most in the NFL. After a career of being able to rely on his athletic dominance, his quick dropoff has put him in a position where he has been unprepared to deal with receivers now faster than him.

That doesn’t mean he was a wizard in zone coverage, either. The yardage he’s given up in zone has been an issue, too, ranking 61st among corners in yards per snap given up on traditional zone assignments: Cover-2, Cover-3, Cover-4, Cover-6 and so on.

He arguably should have given up substantially more yardage as there were a number of plays that Peterson found himself well behind his assignment only to see the quarterback look elsewhere. His matchup against Terry McLaurin of Washington is as demonstrable of this as anything else.

The issue isn’t that Peterson is a raw athlete with sloppy technique, but rather that he’s developed excellent technique that has been contingent upon his athleticism. Think of a cornerback whose recovery speed allows him to bait quarterbacks into throwing at receivers who look open but really aren’t. Peterson’s work as a trail technique corner over the years has been excellent, but it now looks out of place as he not only allows substantial yardage but significant after-the-catch yardage as well.

He’s still a physically strong cornerback but needs to redevelop his approach to press that doesn’t rely on his ability to recover after a missed jam and should close sooner on targets in zone coverage. Not only that, but his quickness — a huge asset for someone so large for a player at his position — has diminished even further than his speed has.

In the first half of the season, when he would shadow receivers much more often, he gave up more yards per snap in slot coverage than any other cornerback with at least 40 such snaps. After letting up on his shadow coverage assignments, he didn’t see enough qualifying snaps as a slot corner to see many targets, especially after Week 11.

The slot was never where he did his best work. His remarkable 2018 season, when he ranked fourth in yards allowed per snap in coverage and fifth in PFF grade, only saw 11 snaps all season in the slot. But he was substantially better there in the past than he has been since 2019.

That’s probably the first clue to figuring out if there’s a valuable role for Peterson with the Vikings: He ranks 29th out of 84 qualifying corners in yards per cover snaps on plays outside of the slot.

Situated as just an outside corner in the Vikings defense, they’ll be able to push Jeff Gladney inside and allow him to focus solely on learning the nickel role instead of splitting his development at two different positions.

Mike Zimmer has also done a tremendous job of coaching techniques into corners specifically to overcome physical limitations, allowing stiffer corners like Trae Waynes and Xavier Rhodes to develop speed turns and cover quick out-breaking routes or close down on sharp digs. While he has long maintained a preference for faster players at the position, he can continue to play his corners in the Cover-2 the Vikings were forced into last year or the preferred Cover-4 he ran prior to this year, both of which can be designed to limit the necessity for pure speed.

Peterson is a remarkably smart corner who excels at reading opposing offenses and route patterns, and he has good instincts for zone handoffs and rolling coverages despite his stronger experience as a pure man-to-man corner. Though his interception numbers this year were down — with one coming off of a deflection and another thrown right to him — his ability to get his hands on the ball is still there and his ball skills are difficult to find across the league.

Peterson’s strengths as a corner — play recognition, technical skill, strength and so on — might allow him to be effective for a few more years. Peterson has lost a step, but he’s still not slow when compared to corners leaguewide. He simply looks slower than he is as a result of his style of play that emphasizes speed. That doesn’t mean he’s still an effective cornerback, but rather that he might still be valuable despite suffering under a scheme and style of play that made him look worse than he could be.

From Minnesota’s perspective, he may very well be close to done, but taking a risk on a player like Peterson makes sense. Add in the fact that the Vikings have been relying on young corners — essentially an entire corps on rookie contracts — to execute a complicated scheme, and grabbing a veteran who has seen everything is remarkably appealing.

The level of risk one should take for that potential is difficult to gauge, but it’s likely that the Vikings overpaid Peterson for the risk that he represents. If they hit on the reward, it’s unlikely to come in the form of an All-Pro corner returning to his previous level of play but rather a player who performs at an above-average level. A middling reward for a substantial risk seems to be a poor use of $10 million, especially when it likely signals the last starter signing of the free-agency cycle.

Of course, the Vikings could transition Peterson to safety, like Charles Woodson did in his waning years as a defensive back. For a lot of players hitting the back end of their careers, that can be a worthwhile transition, especially in the Cover-4 system Zimmer prefers to run where he could take particular advantage of a veteran’s ability to read a play and react.

While it seems likely — for the moment — that the Vikings see Peterson purely as a corner at this point, any substantial problems that crop up during the spring evaluation period might force a conversation about a position switch that could be fruitful for both parties.

Add in his remarkable durability — he’s never missed a start due to injury — and the valid concerns the Vikings have about Mike Hughes and Cameron Dantzler from an availability perspective, as well as the opportunity for a veteran to mentor young corners in the building, and it’s easy to see why they went after Peterson.

It’s fair to acknowledge that Peterson wasn’t a good player last year, though the Vikings probably could have benefited from having him given the level of play from the corners on their roster. A player who has underperformed for two consecutive seasons is more likely to continue disappointing than bounce back.

But the seeds of a turnaround are there, and those seeds seem more likely to blossom than they are for other players who have dropped off this dramatically late in their careers. It could be that the Peterson signing is the opposite of the Tomlinson signing: underperforming and overpaid, who nevertheless represents the right kind of player to add to the Vikings defense.