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Minnesota Defense Overwhelms Atlanta

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By DAVE CAMPBELL, The Associated Press

Published: September 10, 2007

MINNEAPOLIS - Somewhere, Michael Vick must have been shaking his head. Joey Harrington just shrugged off Atlanta's season opener as a stroke of bad luck, but this was a troubling start.

The Minnesota defense overwhelmed Harrington with six sacks and two interception returns for touchdowns, and rookie running back Adrian Peterson finished off the Falcons in a 24-3 victory by the Vikings on Sunday.

'They just made the big plays and we didn't, and that's what the game came down to,' Harrington said.

Kevin Williams returned an interception 54 yards for a score on Atlanta's first possession, a play made possible when a quick snap count by the Falcons caught Williams flat-footed and kept him from rushing.

'They were fighting uphill the rest of the day,' Williams said.
Antoine Winfield intercepted a pass bobbled by Michael Jenkins and ran it back 14 yards for the final touchdown, less than five minutes after Peterson's clinching score.

Thrust into full duty when starter Chester Taylor hurt his hip, Peterson made an amazing catch out of the backfield that he turned into a 60-yard touchdown reception. He also, by the way, finished with 103 yards rushing on 19 carries.

'My vision is having Chester and Adrian carry it equally,' Coach Brad Childress said. 'Obviously it's nice to have somebody take up the slack.'

Harrington? He was actually doing OK until the disastrous final stretch. But he fell to 23-44 in his career as a starter and didn't do anything to make Atlanta forget about Vick, whose suspension and probable jail time for his role in a dogfighting ring stunned the Falcons.

'We knew under pressure, he would throw the ball in the air and give us a chance to make plays,' Winfield said.

Harrington finished 23-for-32 for 199 yards, but he failed to lead his team to the end zone. He also paid dearly for those two interceptions, even though they weren't all his fault.

'One guy would break down here and one guy would break down there. So it just wasn't all clicking,' new coach Bobby Petrino said.

Peterson, the seventh overall draft pick out of Oklahoma, was taken to inject some life into an offense that was one of the NFL's worst last season.

With the Vikings clutching a 10-3 lead early in the fourth quarter, Peterson sneaked past a blitzing DeAngelo Hall and put both hands on an off-target pass from Tarvaris Jackson. The ball popped straight up in the air, but Peterson caught it and ran through the secondary without being touched.

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