Free agent RB Adrian Peterson’s meeting with New England ended without a contract signing Monday, a circumstance that (for the time being, anyway), should please author/screenwriter Dennis Lehane. In an op/ed for the Boston Globe, Lehane, a former counselor for abused children, declared to Peterson, “You deserve scorn and public approbation. You don’t deserve a contract.”

Adrian Peterson beat up a preschooler so badly the child had cuts on his thights, hands, and abdomen. He had bruises on his lower back and buttocks. Peterson admitted to the child’s mother that he did feel a tiny bit of remorse, but only because he managed to hit the child in the testicles. He mentioned no remorse over filling the child’s mouth with leaves and then stripping the child’s pants to his ankles prior to administering the beating. Because we all know how important it is, if you’re a 6’ 1”, 220-pound man, to gag and strip a preschooler before you beat him with wood.

Instead of chasing rings or another lucrative contract or an ultimately meaningless rushing record for players over 32, maybe Peterson should retire. And take a parenting course. Read a few books on the subject. Get in touch with whatever rage over his own abused inner child comes out when he aspires to “tear up (the) butt” of one of his children. Michael Vick apologized and sought to make restitution for his crimes. That took character, maturity, a reclaiming of his moral center. Adrian Peterson, thus far, has shown that the only center he believes in is his place at the center of the universe and as the apple of God’s eye.