Dan Bickley

The Republic | azcentral.com

Patrick Peterson is privileged. He has wealth, fame and a beautiful family. The richness of his life came into full view during a recent trip to Haiti, where he and his wife worked in a village that had no electricity, no running water and no shortage of smiling faces.

“So many people in America complain about the smallest things,” Peterson said. “They don’t know what other people have to do just to survive. And I don’t want to take anything for granted.”

That includes his career with the Cardinals, where Peterson is caught in a trap of his own making. He is entering his seventh NFL season. He has six Pro Bowls on his resume. He was just voted the 19th best player in the league in a survey of his peers and was the top-rated cornerback on the list.

You can only imagine how good it felt to have Seattle’s Richard Sherman in his rearview mirror.

But here’s the rub: As he’s mastered the art of his position, he has effectively shut down his own star power. He was the least-targeted NFL cornerback in 2016, with a ball thrown in his direction once every 8.5 passes. He rarely gets the opportunity to make the highlight reel, a hard concession for a player who relishes the limelight.

Unlike those villagers in Haiti, who can’t miss what they’ve never had, Peterson is yearning to reclaim what he’s lost on his way to the top.

“I’ve done a really good job the last couple of years disrupting the timing between a quarterback and the wide receiver,” he said. “They know when they watch film that Peterson is going to be in my Number 1 receiver’s face all day long. And when I’m in the receiver’s face, nine times out of 10 the ball is not coming my way. So I have to do different things so I can put myself in position to make plays.”

Defensively, there are things that could help Peterson make a bigger splash, like playing more zone coverage or the emergence of another quality cornerback on the other side of the field. But as long as Peterson is continually assigned to shadow the other team’s best receiver, there’s not much he can do.

Special teams are another story, where Peterson tied an NFL record as a rookie in 2011 by returning four punts for touchdowns. He has scored only one touchdown since, on a 30-yard interception return in 2014. The drought on kick returns aptly symbolizes the decline in special teams, a problem that has dogged the Cardinals in recent years.

“I always give credit to my teammates, and in my rookie year, I had a great group of guys in front of me,” Peterson said. “I joke with them all the time. I tell them I can’t make 11 guys miss. I can make a couple, but not everyone. We have lot of guys watching the show. I tell them watch the show on Monday. Don’t watch me return the ball.”

Peterson is a respected leader, a good-natured sort with an effervescent personality. Don’t mistake his words for bitterness or deflection. But there are very few athletic professions where a star player can be strategically removed from a game. To wit, Barry Bonds drew 232 walks in 2004, including 120 intentional passes, and still managed to hit 45 home runs.

Still, there was a time when Peterson's transcendent abilities prompted the Cardinals to make him a three-way player, occasionally deploying him on offense. And it’s not like his talent just disappeared.

Over the years, he’s lost his place on the marquee. When Tyrann Mathieu emerged as an MVP candidate on defense, he was groomed to succeed Larry Fitzgerald as the face of the franchise. That honor has now shifted to running back David Johnson.

Peterson still has his electrifying moments, and his jaw-dropping interception against the Bills last season is proof. But he’s only 26 and in the prime of his career. And he wants to make headlines for something other than arriving at training camp in a helicopter, which he did last season at the behest of Cardinals President Michael Bidwill.

He never imagined the grief that would follow, especially as the Cardinals struggled in the opening month of the season.

“The boss man just got a new vehicle and he wanted me to be the first to ride in it,” Peterson said. “So I wasn’t going to turn that down.”

Peterson remains highly optimistic about the future. He said Mathieu is doing everything in his power to stay healthy in 2017. He said the team’s camaraderie is "phenomenal," and that the working environment feels like a college locker room. He loves everything about the organization, from Bidwill’s support to the way Bruce Arians and Steve Keim assemble the roster and "put together a well-rounded team.”

He’s also found great perspective and joy from his humanitarian efforts in Haiti, where he helped plant trees and deliver fresh water to deprived Haitians. He was so moved by the trip that he and his wife went through their closet upon returning to Arizona and shipped large amounts of clothing to the villagers.

“Walking through some of those villages, you see kids who don’t have underwear, girls who don’t have shirts,” he said. “But they all have big smiles on their faces, and their energy is amazing. I never thought I would experience or see something like that, and it made me feel very grateful for the position I’m in.”

Peterson and his wife plan on making annual trips to Haiti, helping themselves by helping others. He just needs to find a way back to the end zone and the 2017 season would be a great place to start.

BICKLEY:Nkemdiche learning what it means to be a pro

BICKLEY:Carson Palmer can't wait for his last shot

RELATED:Cardinals QB Carson Palmer feeling focused, aims for big season

MORE:Working from home worked out for Cardinals safety Budda Baker

Reach Bickley at dan.bickley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8253. Follow him on twitter.com/dan.bickley. Listen to “Bickley and Marotta” weekdays from 12-2 p.m. on 98.7 FM Arizona’s Sports Station.