Teammates Of The Week: Adrian Peterson And Chase Ford

Our Teammates of the Week for this week are a pretty unlikely pair. One is the reigning and defending National Football League Most Valuable Player. . .the other is a guy that's been signed to and released from the practice squad numerous times, was active this week thanks to a bunch of injuries, and on the field largely because of another injury. It might sound like a wacky buddy comedy that's coming to a network near you this fall, but it actually made for a pretty decent pairing on Sunday in Dallas.

Trailing the Dallas Cowboys by a score of 20-17 in the fourth quarter, the Minnesota Vikings found themselves facing 4th-and-inches at the Cowboys' 11-yard line. The Vikings did the natural thing in that situation, which is turn around and hand the football to running back Adrian Peterson. Peterson rumbled over the right side of the line of scrimmage and easily got the necessary yardage, but it appeared that he would be stopped short of the end zone. He was nearly picked up off of the ground by Dallas safety Jeff Heath, and it looked like the Vikings would be looking at a first-and-goal situation.

And then something happened.

Tight end Chase Ford saw that Peterson was about to be taken down and. . .well, he did this.

(Just ignore the caption. . .please.)

Ford, seeing that Peterson was about to be taken down, grabbed Peterson, held him upright, and then basically tackled his own teammate into the end zone. Not to take anything away from Peterson's run, because it's one of the better ones of his career, in all honesty. . .but it doesn't happen without the help of Chase Ford.

We've heard of teammates picking each other up when they're down. In this case, we have a teammate actually, physically helping another team member when they were down. It was a great run by Peterson, a great heads-up move by Ford, and together it's good enough to make them our Teammates of the Week for Week 9.