Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson reached a plea agreement yesterday. His "no contest" plea reduced the felony child abuse charge to misdemeanor reckless assault. The plea will not include a reference to family violence or violence against a minor. That last part seems pretty significant but it remains to be seen if it will hold any sway over the NFL and their new domestic violence policy. Under the plea, Peterson will pay $4,000, perform 80 hours of community service, take parenting classes, and spend two years on probation. If he complies with all of that, this case will be cleared from his record.
Peterson and his lawyer Rusty Hardin have been in contact with the NFL throughout this process. It's difficult to imagine that Peterson would have accepted any sort of plea deal if the league was going to further punish him. He was pretty adamant about clearing his name. He was also pretty adamant about getting back on the football field. He's been on the "commissioner's exempt list" for the past eight games. Only the commissioner can remove him from that list. If Roger "the Goods" Goodell views those eight games as time served, it's an easy leap to imagine that Adrian Peterson could be in a Vikings uniform when the team visits Chicago on November 16. The Vikings bye is this week so the timing is almost too perfect. The biggest obstacle to this return appears to be "image." The NFL took a whole bunch of hits to the gut over the past several months. Ray Rice, Greg Hardy, Peterson. There was a parade of players that went off the rails in their off-the-field lives. The big, proud NFL made it all worse by simply hoping that it would all go away. It didn't and it shouldn't. The league can't overreact here simply because of the mistakes made in the Ray Rice case.
Adrian Peterson disciplined his son with a switch. It's the way that he was raised. It's the discipline that he knew. He probably learned pretty quick that many don't view that as the proper way to discipline a child. Many consider it abuse. Others consider it good, old-fashioned parenting. Who's right? Probably the former but there's enough of a question that the prosecutors in Houston decided that a plea deal was the right route to take. There's a better than decent chance that Peterson would have come out of a jury trial unscathed but he couldn't wait for a jury trial. That sort of divide in the public's perception of this sort of parenting separates this case from that of Rice and Hardy. Taking a switch to a child for doing something wrong is far less abusive than not caring at all. Adrian Peterson is in the lives of all of his children. He cares about his children and he cares for his children. Too many men in this world forget about their children and the women that they once knew. Peterson could have done that but didn't. The mother of the child that Peterson disciplined wants the father to remain involved in their lives. She doesn't see Peterson as a threat to her child. She doesn't see him as a dangerous, frightening father. If nothing else, maybe this whole painful process will help Adrian Peterson become a better father.
Roger Goodell is on the clock.
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