As the St. Louis Rams found out in their Week 1 matchup against Minnesota, Vikings receiver Cordarrelle Patterson is fast. Really, really fast.

The 23-year-old NFL sophomore busted out of the gates with a highlight that will probably go down as one of the top runs of the season, blowing past Ram defenders on his way to a 67-yard touchdown in the third quarter of Sunday’s game, as seen below in this video by SB Nation.

Patterson ended the game with 102 yards rushing on three attempts, while also catching three passes for 26 yards.

This isn’t the first time the speedy Patterson broke out a 67-yard touchdown on a helpless defense; he did the same back in 2012 while in college at Tennessee in a game against NC State.


In that game, Patterson ran for 72 total yards and caught six passes for 93 yards and a touchdown as the Vols beat the Wolfpack, 35-21.

With a team that boasts one of the best running backs in the league in former MVP Adrian Peterson, having Patterson as another threat out of the backfield, as a receiver, and also a kick returner is an X-factor that could push the Vikings over the top in what is expected to be a very competitive NFC North.

Coming out of college in 2013, Patterson impressed at the NFL combine, running a 4.42 second 40-yard dash, a 128 inch broad jump, and a combine-best 37 inch vertical jump, with an NFL.com score of 90.6.

His 40-yard dash time was the sixth best for wide receivers at the 2013 combine. The 18.5 mph he averaged puts him around the same max speed of polar bears, roadrunners, and black mamba snakes.

The Vikings made him one of their first-round picks that year, taking him at No. 29 overall. In his rookie year with Minnesota, Patterson caught 45 passes for 469 yards and four touchdowns.

But it was as a kick returner that Patterson began to pop eyeballs, returning 43 kicks for a total of 1,393 yards and two touchdowns, including an NFL-record 109-yard return to open their game against the Packers on Oct. 27.


Patterson also added three more rushing touchdowns last season to bring his total to nine. The rookie earned many accolades last year, including an NFL Offensive Rookie of the Month award, an NFC Special Teams Player of the Week and a Player of the Month award, and was named to the Pro Bowl and a First-team All-Pro.

The Patriots were run over by Knowshon Moreno and the Dolphins in Week 1 to the tune of 191 yards in their 33-20 loss in Miami. Now, heading to Minnesota for Week 2, they’ll need to make some serious adjustments if they hope to slow down the duo of Peterson and Patterson on Sunday.