After surgery, Adrian Peterson still making moves

Yes, Adrian Peterson has watched the replay footage of that fateful and seemingly routine third-quarter run from Christmas Eve in Maryland. Just thinking about it causes the Vikings running back to recoil and cringe as if he has just downed a glass of curdled milk.

Everyone knows how that sequence turned out, Peterson planting at the wrong instant with Redskins safety DeJon Gomes arriving at the same moment and delivering a hit that turned Peterson's left leg into a pipe cleaner.

Just like that, Peterson tore his anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments.

"My stomach crawls just looking at it," Peterson said. "Your leg is not supposed to go that way. At all."

Yet aside from that unpleasant revisiting of a career-altering moment, Peterson proved cheerful and optimistic when he met with reporters Friday at Winter Park to discuss his rehabilitation.

Just two weeks removed from surgery, Peterson has now completed the first phase of what Vikings head athletic trainer Eric Sugarman calls a five-phase recovery process.

Peterson has begun restrengthening his quadriceps while also working on his range of motion. And he impressed Sugarman this week with his efforts on a stationary bike, showing great extension and flexion.

The agonizing postoperative pain that caused Peterson more than a few sleepless nights has subsided. Gone, too, is the self-pity and hypothetical reflection that had consumed him immediately following the injury.

"Oh, trust me, I went through that," Peterson said. "[I was like], 'Dang, what if I would have kept [the run] front side? Or 'If I would have done some ropes during the week, maybe I would have been able to get my foot up faster when I made that cut.' But it happened, man. I just figured what are the odds?"

But now the focus has turned to the road ahead and a recovery process Sugarman is overseeing with great care. Sugarman readily acknowledges his biggest chore between now and the fall will be retaining Peterson's patience.

Yes, the star running back is promising to attack his rehabilitation with great vigor. But Sugarman also knows he'll inevitably have to pull the reins back.

"We're not in a race," Sugarman said. "We're not going to rush him. We're not trying to jump to all the different phases. We're following the protocol that's prescribed for him and everyone that's had an ACL tear."

For what it's worth, Peterson is now walking without crutches and also had his surgery sutures removed. These are what Sugarman would classify as two "little victories" in a recovery process that will be full of them.

Phase 2 of the rehab will take place over the next two weeks with Peterson continuing to test his range of motion and working toward shedding the bulky brace he's wearing.

From there, the ensuing six to eight weeks will be geared toward working through a critical stage in which Peterson's replacement ligament will naturally be at its weakest.

"That's the one thing where you really have to be cautious in the first couple months," Sugarman said. "You can't push him too hard, otherwise you can put him at risk. He knows that. We all know that."

To be clear, at present Peterson's rehab remains in the very early stages. But Sugarman also asserted again that he hopes to have Peterson ready to play by Week 1 of next season, a lofty goal the running back has set and intends to reach.

Said Sugarman: "If we can meet it, that's great. We're going to strive for it until someone tells us we can't."

By May, Peterson should be on track to enter the fifth and longest phase of the recovery process. That's a stage, Sugarman said, "when you don't have really many restrictions at all as far as what you can and can't do safely. But then, of course, it just takes several months to get all your strength back, get your function back, get your agility back and all that power and burst."

Peterson has no problems admitting he questioned his ill fate immediately after he tore his ACL. But now he's reached a point of acceptance.

"It was meant to happen," he said, "because it happened."

Yet with that acceptance, Peterson also stressed he will not be slowed by skeptics who wonder if he will ever be the same explosive player he was for his first five NFL seasons.

"I feel like I'm going to come back better than before," Peterson said. "I know people might laugh at that or think otherwise. But you know what? It doesn't matter what they think or how they feel about it. The only thing that matters is how I feel about it and what I believe."