Vikings defensive tackle Kevin Williams returned today from his two-game StarCaps suspension and said his left foot feels good, his conditioning is where it needs to be and that there's no way in heck he's missing another game because of plantar fasciitis.

"I'm definitely going to play," Williams said. "Sitting at home for two weeks was bad enough. My foot isn't going to stop me."

Williams hasn't played since the second preseason game. He missed the third preseason game because of plantar fasciitis, sat out with the rest of the starters in the fourth preseason game and then had to serve his two-game suspension.

He said he stayed in town and watched the Vikings from his home in the Twin Cities.

"I was here on the couch, yelling at the screen," he said.

"It was tough," Williams added. "I wanted to be out there with the guys. It was real difficult to watch, especially with how it unfolded in both of those games."

As for he conditioning, he said: "I'm in pretty good shape. I'm ready to play a game. I know it's going to be different when those pads go on. But as far as conditioning-wise, I feel good. the wind will get cut short with the pads strapped around you. it'll take a few plays to get the second wind. It'll be fine. ... I won't say I'm a full 100 percent, but I'm probably as close as I'm going to get this time of year. We'll just evaluate it week to week."

Williams also talked about how the NFL also is taking two more game checks (worth about $1.4 million) in addition too the two-game suspension. He criticized the league when the punishment was announced, saying "There isn't a job in America that you do the work for free."

"I try not to think about it anymore," Williams said. "It's a known feeling that I'll be out there two weeks without pay. Y'all can take up a pot if you want and I'll be more than happy to take it."

Before anyone gets outraged by that last sentence, he was joking.

As for finally putting the StarCaps suspension behind him after three years, Williams said, "It's good. I thought we were fighting for a good cause and had a good case to fight for. It didn't go in our favor so we move on and it;s tim to play football."

The Vikings have a roster exemption for Williams until Wednesday.

Notes:

  • The theme among the players who were in the locker room during the media access period was summed up best by TE Visanthe Shiancoe. "The Vikings beat the Vikings," Shiancoe said not once, not twice, but three times.
  • Percy Harvin was talking about the team's third-down woes when he revealed this nugget, probably by accident: "We've just got to execute the play that was called a little better. Twice, we were lined up in the wrong formation so that's just little mistakes that we're killing ourselves. We're in the right formation, we probably had two walk-in touchdowns." Asked to elaborate, Harvin said, "I'm not getting into that. We didn't execute enough to get the job done. I'm not getting into the formations and who did what. As a team, we didn't execute the offense, defense and special teams."