The Vikings have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they will not tolerate a player laying hands on a family member.
Oh, wait, that was last year with a scrub.
While Adrian Peterson apparently isn’t getting more than a paid weekend off after admitting to beating/disciplining his 4-year-old son, the Vikings have acted swiftly before.
Last November, the Vikings released cornerback A.J. Jefferson less than 24 hours after he was arrested for probable cause for domestic assault. I’d look up the disposition of the case, but it’s not like anyone cares anyway.
Jefferson was a reserve, and not worth the trouble of clattering on about due process while pretending to care about anything but the bottom line, so he was released.
That’s life in the NFL. If you can help a team win, excuses will be made for you no matter how ridiculous they sound falling out of the mouths of the excuse-makers.
That’s not to pile on the Vikings. Everybody does it.
The Panthers released sixth-round linebacker Lawrence Wilson in 2011, five days after he was arrested for driving in possession of marijuana (and perhaps because he cried in front of the cops). He was on the practice squad at the time, after they realized he wasn’t worth that sixth-round pick.
But Greg Hardy was arrested in May and found guilty by a judge in July of assaulting his then-girlfriend and communicating threats, including saying he’d kill her and throwing her into a futon full of guns.
He played in the opener at Tampa, and it took video of Ray Rice punching his wife in the face to force them to deactivate him Sunday (that was some punch, that it was felt 450 miles away in Charlotte).
The league can hire women into prestigious jobs with titles and salaries, and they can educate and legislate, but until the paying customers demand accountability from everyone involved — and not just the disposable — nothing is going to change.
