Anyone who doesn't understand how this could happen doesn't have a firm grasp on Vikings history. But they also lack perspective on what it means to compete at the highest level.
Being an elite athlete shouldn't be a thankless job. But it should be a tank-less one.
You cannot -- or rather, should not -- tell or expect a professional athlete to stop competing and/or attempt to lose a game. Anybody worth having on a team you are rooting for should not have those character traits in their DNA.
As such, why shouldn't Adrian Peterson have played Saturday? He was healthy enough at the outset, he is very well paid to do it. Anyone trying to pin his injury on anything but a bad break is missing the greater point.
Those folks are probably same ones who start thinking about draft position as soon as a team shows a hint of failure. They are perhaps frustrated by Joe Webb's playmaking brilliance, unnerved by Toby Gerhart's insistence on running over would-be tacklers and mystified that Saturday, of all times, the Vikings finally intercepted a pass.
Sorry, but if you have a competitive bone in your body, you have to understand that between the lines, there should not be a choice. There is only the highest standard a player and a team set for themselves. There is no shame in success, and there should be on apologies for winning.