Last week, Vikings coach Mike Zimmer and G.M. Rick Spielman traveled to Houston in the hopes of persuading running back Adrian Peterson to return to Minnesota for a ninth NFL season. This week, Peterson went to New York to see the men who sign the checks.
Per the report from Tom Pelissero of USA Today, Mark and Zygi Wilfs didn’t dispatch a private jet to fetch him in Houston. Instead, Peterson flew commercial.
This suggests that the trip wasn’t about the Wilfs convincing Peterson to stay, but about Peterson convincing the Wilfs to let him leave. If it were about trying to get Peterson to stay, the Wilfs would have taken their own plane to Houston, along with a new contract.
Peterson surely didn’t fly from Houston to New York to be wooed. More likely, Peterson flew to New York to ask the wizard for a new team. And now he’ll have to hope that the Wilfs, who hold his rights for the next three years, will decide after paying him for a full season and getting only one game of performance in 2014 to let him go for whatever they can get in trade.
The latest development, along with everything else that has happened since Wednesday, points to a conclusion: (1) that Peterson told Zimmer and Spielman last week that Peterson wants out; and (2) that the Wilfs have decided at a minimum to make Peterson come to them and ask nicely.
Now the question becomes what the Wilfs will do. Will they trade him for whatever they can get? Or will they tell him that he needs to honor the big-money contract he signed in 2011, and that he can either play for the Vikings or play for no one?
The Wilfs didn’t acquire the vast resources necessary to buy a football team by making bad business decisions. With the ball apparently now in their court, there’s a chance they’ll decide not to give Peterson what some would characterize as a reward for a problem that arose from something Peterson did. There’s a chance they’ll decide to play hardball.
The mere fact that Peterson had to fly commercial to New York to make his case suggests that maybe they will.
