McKinnie, Peterson Return From Trip To Africa

We mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Vikings' tackle Bryant McKinnie was on a mission to Africa, helping some of the world's poorest people in various ways. What wasn't mentioned is that one of his teammates tagged along with him on that trip.

That teammate was some guy named Adrian Peterson. . .so I'm surprised that I didn't hear anything about it until now.

McKinnie had plenty of other company, too. . .he was there with Larry Fitzgerald, Vernon Davis, Vontae Davis, Roy Williams, Gerald McCoy, Derrick Morgan, and Tommie Harris.

The players dug water wells for schools, helped fit more than 3,000 people with hearing aides and passed out some mislabeled championship shirts, bearing the names and logos of Super Bowl and the conference championship losers.

See, this is why it wasn't worth jumping all over Adrian Peterson for his comments that he made a couple weeks ago about the CBA. . .because, quite frankly, it's things like this and the numerous other things that he's done in four years in Minnesota that shows that this is Adrian Peterson, and this is what he does.

So the guy said one dumb thing in four NFL seasons. . .big freaking deal. If we punished everybody that ever said anything stupid, Twitter and Facebook would cease to exist overnight.

So big props to the NFL's best running back and Big Mac for doing this for those folks over in Africa. They've both taken a great deal of flack from the football intelligensia. . .some of it deserved, most of it not. . .so it's time to recognize when they do something good, too.