Freudenthal triple systems come in two flavors, degenerate and nondegenerate. The best criterion for distinguishing between the two which is available in the literature is by descent. We provide an identity which is satisfied only by nondegenerate triple systems. We then use this to define algebraic structures whose automorphism groups produce all adjoint algebraic groups of type E 7 over an arbitrary field of characteristic = 2, 3. As an application, we provide a construction of adjoint groups

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... with Tits algebras of index 2. We use this construction to fully describe the degree one connecting homomorphism on Galois cohomology for all adjoint groups of type E 7 over a real-closed field.