Written By Sam Ekstrom
It couldn’t have been easy for Rick Spielman, Mike Zimmer or any Minnesota Vikings player or public relations staffer to get out of bed Monday morning. It wasn’t easy for me, and all I had to do was go and watch them squirm under the hot lights of national news cameras.
Walking up to the facility at Winter Park in Eden Prairie, Minn., under an overcast sky, the tone – and aroma – were quickly established as a large vehicle hoisted rancid porta-potties to ostensibly transport them to some landfill. They say Eden Prairie is one of the best places to live in the whole country, but not the case on Monday.
It was going to be a crappy day.
There hadn’t been such a congregation of media since Brett Favre came to Minnesota in 2009. NFL Network, ESPN and Sports Illustrated represented the national landscape. Local outlets sent up to five reporters. Colleague Tom Schreier, the resident Twins beat reporter for The Ticket, estimated that the throng could fill the Target Field press box. And they were all there to barbecue Rick Spielman like a shish kabob. Spielman didn’t do anything wrong to deserve it, but he was about to become the media scapegoat for the Vikings’ perceived ineptitude in handling the child abuse allegations toward Adrian Peterson.
The star running back, indicted on accounts of child abuse toward his 4-year-old son, had just been reinstated to the Vikings and permitted to practice and presumably play on Sunday. In all likelihood, the owners of the team, Zygi and Mark Wilf, had a significant voice in the decision, but Spielman evidently drew the short straw for who had to face a salty group of media members that had been chomping at the bit since Zimmer deflected Peterson questions after Sunday’s loss. “I don’t want to talk about it,” the first-year coach had said multiple times on Sunday.
Peterson, by all accounts, was still one of the league’s good guys before the allegations. If NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was some kind of greedy, conniving Santa, Peterson would have been on his “Nice List.” A Star Tribune story from May of 2013 said this: “Yes, Peterson remains one of the NFL's true good guys, a likeable superstar, who was also the Vikings Community Man of the Year in 2012. He is at once down to earth and giving of his time.”
But the 29-year-old running back with a reckless rushing style had subtly developed a history of reckless actions and words: caught driving 109 mph, involved in a nightclub altercation, reportedly had seven children but wasn’t sure of their existence, compared the NFL to slavery; even his proclamations of 2,500-yard rushing seasons had a certain level of tone-deafness.
Most of these incidents shared a common thread: Peterson’s inability to think of consequences for words and actions. This comes into play when considering the primary issue at hand of Peterson disciplining his son with a switch. Usually in discipline, the disciplined one is supposed to acknowledge that a certain negative action led to a certain negative reaction. In Peterson’s case, his reaction lacked foresight or consequence analysis.
The evidence on Peterson was overwhelming and incriminating. He even admitted to his actions. There was less ambiguity here than there was in the Ray Rice case before the infamous elevator video.
Spielman was forced Monday to do his best lawyer impersonation to defend Peterson, his actions and the team’s decision. But he was doomed to fail from the start.
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Ninety minutes before Spielman took the stage, the locker room was available for reporters to hear from the players, though none held enough organizational sway to receive any harsh questioning. Why should they? It wasn’t their decision to put Peterson back on the field. “It’s out of my hands,” said defensive end Everson Griffen. “It’s not my place and time to talk about it, but it’s out of my hands. I can’t do nothing to control what happened.”
Harrison Smith jokingly hid in a locker to escape the television cameras, clearly understanding that folks in suits weren’t there to ask about the nickel defense, but then claimed not to know about Adrian’s reinstatement. “That’s the first I’ve really even heard of it … I’ve kind of kept myself away from it just so I can be honest with you guys,” Smith said to the press.
Through it all, though, the players echoed resounding support for Peterson, the former MVP, which makes a great deal of sense. The first person to voice that they have a problem with Peterson gets recognized, polarized and villainized on every news network. There would be stories about locker room schisms and players’ discontent with Peterson’s presence. Nobody was going to throw AP under the bus. “It was a great feeling having one of your best players on offense back,” said cornerback Captain Munnerlyn. “It’s always a great feeling. So glad we got him back, and I support the decision of our organization.”
Since the players weren’t provocative enough, all the vitriol was held in for Spielman. Somebody had to get flustered Monday or the media didn’t do its job. Those doing the bombarding were largely big names with big personas who would be gone for good by the end of the day – no running relationship with the team or its personnel. In other words, they could drop bombs and not have to worry about awkward encounters later on, grudges being held or seeing Vikings people ever again.
Minutes ticked by as Spielman missed his 2 p.m. start time. The only sounds heard were the typing of tweets and the uncomfortable on-camera report by NFL Network’s Jeff Darlington amidst an otherwise quiet room: “We’re still waiting for general manager Rick Spielman … Back to you.”
At 2:06 p.m., the general manager took the stage and read a scripted statement and seemed to struggle handling the challenge of reading the statement while keeping moderate eye contact with the camera.
Then he opened it up to questions. The first came from a local politic reporter who asked about the message the Vikings were sending to child abuse victims. Within one line of answering, Spielman delivered his worst PR line of the day. “I understand that this is a very difficult thing to handle, but also we feel strongly as an organization that this is disciplining a child.” In Spielman’s defense, the Vikings essentially have to stand by that – if they admitted it was child abuse and still played Peterson, they would look 10 times worse. But leading with the claim that it was just disciplining a child seemed tone deaf. The GM should have just skipped to his next line: “Whether it’s an abusive situation or not, or that he went too far disciplining, we feel very strongly that that is the court’s decision to make. But we also understand the seriousness of abusing children as well.”
Over the next 12 minutes, Spielman iterated and reiterated that the Vikings gathered information over the weekend about Peterson and determined that he “deserved” to play this week. Spielman used some form of the word “gather” nine different times. What was gathered wasn’t made clear by Spielman – all in the name of letting “the legal process play out.” But clearly, there was enough ambiguity with the facts, enough room to doubt Peterson's guilt, that the Vikings felt Peterson could play without the entire world calling for the team’s head.
It appeared like the Peterson situation was handled differently than past criminal infractions by Viking players. Unused running back Caleb King was released immediately following assault charges in 2012. Unproductive cornerback A.J. Jefferson was cut immediately following a domestic assault incident in 2013. Second-round draft pick Chris Cook was kept on the team but suspended without pay during his domestic assault investigation in 2011. Peterson, on the other hand, will play and be paid this week.
Spielman seemed to get most irritated by questions pertaining to this hot-button topic. As often as he denied the notion that Peterson’s football prowess played into the decision, it’s hard to accept as fact. If practice squad back Joe Banyard was in the same situation, I strongly suspect he would have had his locker cleared out over the weekend. “It has nothing to do with him as a football player,” said Spielman of Peterson. “It has to do purely with the facts that we have presented to us.”
With Spielman stammering, the press only became more ravenous. Etiquette flew out the window as reporters shouted over each other to have their questions heard. “You’ve got like three guys talking,” said Spielman to the throng at one point, holding up his hands to cease the talk-over. A PR rep attempted to stop the questioning several times, but questions kept on raining down. When Spielman did eventually step off the podium, he did so to several last-ditch queries that would go unanswered. Head coach Mike Zimmer stepped up next and started addressing Sunday’s blocked field goal fiasco – an ironic change of mood to say the least.
Zimmer did his best to keep the focus on the game. “How about those Patriots yesterday?” he quipped. The tension in the room seemed to alleviate as Zimmer fielded questions about the Patriots, about Peterson and about adversity. Ten minutes later, the news conference everybody had dreaded was over.
Little did anyone know that within four hours, there would be a new report of Adrian Peterson abusing his son, this time in the back of a car. Almost mercifully, the Vikings get Tuesday, a players day off, to recuperate and strategize while the media waits until Wednesday’s availability.
As of this moment, Peterson will play on Sunday against the Saints, a team no stranger to scandal. He will surely be booed lustily by Saints fans that are already angry over their team’s 0-2 start. The only thing preventing Peterson from suiting up would be the NFL’s intervention, but the league tends to err on the side of lenience while the legal process takes place.
In the course of three days, Peterson went from the charming southern boy with a firm handshake to a potential child abuser with many greater concerns than facing an 8-man front against New Orleans. It’s plenty safe to assume that this story isn’t done playing out, and it will probably keep getting worse before it gets better.
“I am, without a doubt, not a child abuser,” said Peterson in a statement. Unfortunately for all involved, the evidence cannot be unseen. It is visual, and it has been ingrained in our minds.
The next several days will be pivotal in Adrian Peterson’s future as a Viking. Monday’s event certainly didn’t help the cause.
Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket. He has previously served as a play-by-play broadcaster in Iowa and South Dakota and has covered Minnesota sports since 2012. Follow him on Twitter @SamEkstrom for further insights.