Vikings' Greenway and Peterson: anomalies in era of transient players

Chad Greenway announced via Twitter (and later via text message to the Star Tribune) on Thursday that he is returning in 2016 to the Vikings for his 11th and final NFL season.

When Greenway and teammate Adrian Peterson head to training camp this summer with the Vikings, they will do so as anomalies in an era of transient players and short careers.

Greenway was the 17th overall selection in the 2006 NFL draft. He lost his entire first season to injury but has been durable since then. He's also been the very definition of solid on the field, in the locker room and in the community — a combination that has kept him with one team for his entire career.

Greenway will enter 2016 as one of just five players drafted in the first round a decade ago who has played with the same team throughout his career and is still active. The other four from 2006: No. 4 pick D'Brickashaw Ferguson (OL) of the Jets; No. 20 pick Tamba Hali (LB) of the Chiefs; No. 28 pick Marcedes Lewis (TE) of the Jaguars; and No. 29 Nick Mangold (OL) of the Jets. Half of the 16 players drafted before Greenway are no longer in the NFL.

Fast-forward a year to the 2007 draft, when the Vikings took Peterson No. 7 overall. Again, he had most of a season wiped out (2014), but again he remains a Viking — and is one of just four first-rounders from that draft class who has stayed with his original draft team from the beginning and is on the current roster. The other three: No. 3 pick Joe Thomas (OL) of the Browns; No. 15 Lawrence Timmons (LB) of the Steelers; and No. 28 Joe Staley (OL) of the 49ers. Amazingly, Thomas is the only one of the six players drafted before Peterson in 2007 who is even still in the NFL.

The path hasn't always been perfectly clear for either Greenway or Peterson to stay this long. Greenway had to take pay cuts to stay; Peterson's off-field troubles seriously threatened his Vikings career. But they're both still here. In this era, that's a rarity.