Washington running back Adrian Peterson had a 90-yard run on Monday night, and then the team stopped giving him the ball, and he finished the game with less than 100 yards. That has happened only once before in NFL history, and things didn’t go well after that for the team in question.
The only other player who had a 90-yard run but finished a game with less than 100 yards was Herschel Walker, who did it with the 1994 Eagles in a loss to the Falcons. In that game, Walker had three carries for 98 yards and two touchdowns. So why on earth would the Eagles only hand Walker the ball three times if he scored touchdowns on two of those runs, and one of those runs was a 91-yarder?
Well, the answer is that these were Rich Kotite’s 1994 Eagles, and they were a team that saw everything go wrong down the stretch that year. They got off to a 7-2 start that included a 40-8 win over the eventual Super Bowl champion 49ers, an absolutely dominant performance against a great team. And then they lost seven consecutive games to finish 7-9.
That got Kotite fired, and there were major changes in Philadelphia the following offseason including Walker’s departure. That Philadelphia team had an ugly ending to a once-promising season, which may prove to be another similarity with this year’s Washington team.