Schism Watch 2010: Brad Childress Gives Adrian Peterson a Little Verbal Smack Over Minicamp Absence

The majority of Vikings players are currently assembled for minicamp, the three notable absentees being Ray Edwards, Brett Favre and Adrian Peterson.

Edwards is of course still waiting to sign his tender, and is therefore not required to show. Favre is not there because he’s Favre. And then there’s Peterson, who instead of practicing with his teammates, is back in Texas participating in a celebration in his honor.

Now, it’s hardly the end of the world for a star player to miss minicamp – even if, as is the case with Peterson, the star player in question has some issues he needs to work on.

It does, however, look bad. Especially if the player’s excuse is, he needs to be home to march in his own parade.

And that questionable behavior looks even worse when you find out the player didn’t bother telling his coach about his absence until literally days before he was supposed to report.

Given these circumstances, it’s not surprising that Brad Childress sounded a little frustrated when talking about AD after practice on Friday.

“I just know that there’s a bunch of guys here,” Childress said. “This has the term ‘mandatory’ for a reason, and the work’s here, period. … You can say whatever you want. This is the fourth annual Adrian Peterson Day. I don’t know if it’s going to be like every year they’re going to have that. We’re going to have this, too.”

Seems to me that, if you’re Adrian Peterson and you basically own the town of Palestine, Texas, it wouldn’t be that hard for you to get in touch with the organizers of your day and make sure they schedule it for a weekend that doesn’t conflict with a team activity like minicamp.

Even if you think minicamp doesn’t matter much – and I’m guessing most veterans don’t – you still have to take appearances into account. Handling things the way Peterson handled them just looks selfish.

And if Peterson’s excuse is “Brett Favre gets to skip minicamp so why shouldn’t I?”…well that doesn’t fly either, because everyone knew well ahead of time that Favre wouldn’t be there, plus, as stated before, Favre is Favre.

The bottom line is, Peterson acted like a bit of a jerk here. When Bryant McKinnie pulled similar shenanigans at the Pro Bowl – deciding to ditch without going through the proper procedures – everyone slammed him. So, Peterson deserves to get cuffed around at least a little bit.

Let’s hope this isn’t a case of Peterson’s latent diva tendencies beginning to blossom. We’ve already got one spoiled-rotten guy on the team, we don’t need two.