Minnesota Vikings’ Running Back Adrian Peterson Suspended By NFL For Remainder Of The Season

In a major report out of the NFL today, ESPN is reporting that Minnesota Vikings’ star running back Adrian Peterson will miss the remainder of the 2014-2015 regular season. There was an indication that he might have an issue getting back into the NFL this year, but due to the Ray Rice case, many were hopeful that Peterson would be back before the end of the year.

Adrian Peterson has missed the bulk of the season thus far due to a case involving his child. Back in September, Peterson was indicted on child abuse due to the fact that he hit his child with a “switch,” basically a small branch off a tree and caused a great deal of harm to him. This made many people take sides in regards to what is child abuse and what is not. Should it be wrong to spank your child or use any sort of corporal punishment?

What caused many to take the stance against Adrian Peterson was the repeated beating that Peterson did on his 4 year old son that caused various bruising among other things. It forced people to question things. He did a lot of physical harm to his child, far more than most of us would accept even if we believed in corporal punishment for a child.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell claimed that Adrian Peterson would miss the rest of the season due to “an incident of abusive discipline that he inflicted on his four-year-old son.”

The NFL sent out a lengthy statement regarding the matter, which included a lot of interesting remarks. Goodell claimed that due to Peterson seemingly not understanding his wrongdoing, he may commit the same act again in the future, which would not be tolerated.

Goodell wrote more in the letter, including the NFL being prepared to offer help to Peterson, saying,

“We are prepared to put in place a program that can help you to succeed, but no program can succeed without your genuine and continuing engagement. You must commit yourself to your counseling and rehabilitative effort, properly care for your children, and have no further violations of law or league policy.”

So what is the difference between this and the domestic abuse Ray Rice also committed on his wife? The child factor.

It is said that a grown person at least has the ability to think and call for help, a child has no such ability which makes things tougher on them. Therefore, the NFL finds this abuse far worse than that of hitting your adult partner. The NFL instituted a new domestic abuse policy not too long ago, mainly due to the various domestic abuse cases that came out this year alone. Adrian Peterson is now part of that new system, which might seem unfair.

Peterson and Rice both forced the hand of the NFL to change up their policies, but should their punishment be under the old program, considering their incident happened before the new policy? The other question people are asking is, does the court decision made for any domestic abuse situation play a factor in the NFL’s decision?

Currently, Adrian Peterson is not up for reinstatement in the NFL until April of 2015. Needless to say, Peterson is appealing the suspension. Stay tuned for more as we know it.

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