Adrian Peterson Finds Out the Hard Way He's Not Brett Favre

Not many players have the set-up Brett Favre has in regards to minicamp participation in the summer. In fact, maybe no other player in the NFL has Favre's deal.

Adrian Peterson just found this out the hard way. Peterson, the Vikings' star running back, missed all three days of a Vikings mandatory minicamp so he could attend a parade in his honor.

If Peterson is checking the Minneapolis papers on the Internet while missing the minicamp, he has found out that his head coach, Brad Childress, is not happy at all with his decision to miss the camp.

"The work is here," Childress said Friday. "I just know that there's a bunch of guys here.

"This has a term 'mandatory' for a reason and the work is here, period. This is the fourth annual Adrian Peterson Day. I don't know if it's going to be like every year that they are going to have that, but we're going to have this, too. The same thing I told [rookie running back] Toby Gerhart, way before we decided on drafting him. This minicamp was on this date. I know he's going to go back and walk in graduation. This [camp] was going to be here."

Peterson has his "day" in his hometown of Palestine, Texas.

Childress was asked if he thought because Favre is being allowed to miss the minicamp, if that perhaps led Peterson to think it was alright for him.

"That is a special circumstance," Childress said. "I don't think Adrian is battling around retirement in his mind. It's a special set of circumstances."

Favre, after surgery on his ankle, is still deciding if he wants to come back for his 20th NFL season and lead the Vikings one more time.

Peterson has also elected to workout on his own in Houston instead of working out in the offseason workout program that the Vikings have.

One special concern for the Vikings this offseason was to get Peterson to quit fumbling the football. Despite leading the league in rushing two years ago and finishing fifth last year, he has had trouble holding onto the football and the Vikings are concerned about it.

He has had 16 fumbles over the last two seasons.

You know Childress would prefer Peterson was doing his offseason workouts with the team, so they could work on the fumbling problem. And now his decision to miss three days of this mandatory camp for something like this has got the head coach fuming.

The Vikings training camp begins in about six seeks, with the regular season kicking off September 9th—the rematch of the NFC Championship game with New Orleans.