Vikings' Childress careful not to burn out rookie

Despite having a limited number of carries, Adrian Peterson leads the NFL with 607 rushing yards. Icon SMI

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A few years ago, back when he was offensive coordinator with the Eagles, Brad Childress had a talented young tailback named Brian Westbrook. He was fast, explosive and productive, and the temptation was there to give him the ball down after down, series after series.

Childress resisted. Westbrook's 5-foot-8, 215-pound frame wasn't ready for the workload, and despite pressure from fans and media, the Eagles brought Westbrook along slowly. Today, he's one of the most productive backs in football.

Fast forward a few years. Childress is now head coach of the Vikings. Once again, he has an explosive young tailback, Adrian Peterson, and once again he's resisting the temptation to over-use him.

We've all seen promising young backs collapse under the weight of too much too soon. The Bucs gave Cadillac Williams 88 carries in his first three NFL games, and he produced 145 yards and a 4.9 average to open the 2005 season. He hasn't been the same since and is out for the rest of this season with a career-threatening knee injury.

Barry Foster, Dorsey Levens, Jamal Lewis, Natrone Means, James Wilder -- the NFL record book is full of backs who had one, maybe two, huge seasons early in the their career but never recovered from the pounding of 350 to 400 carries.

Which brings us to Peterson.

He certainly looks like a budding superstar. He's big, strong, fast, explosive, has great vision -- he looked like Jim Brown galloping down the field Sunday against the Bears. In fact, Peterson became the first NFL player since Brown 44 years ago to rush for 224 or more yards on 20 or fewer carries.

So here's Childress. He went 6-10 last season in his first year as the Vikings' head coach and went into Sunday's home game against the Bears with a 1-3 record. Pressure was mounting for him to start winning games or else suffer the same fate as Mike Tice, Dennis Green, Jerry Burns and everybody else who's tried to coach the Vikings to their first Super Bowl since the mid-1970s.

The lure of a talent like Peterson must be powerful, especially for a head coach desperate to win. It's easy to think short term and keep feeding him the ball. Squeeze every carry you can out of him, risk his career to advance your own.

But Childress has steadfastly refused to overdo it with the rookie from Oklahoma. Peterson is averaging a respectable but not crippling 19 carries per game. Chester Taylor remains the starter and actually had more carries against the Bears (22) than Peterson (20).

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