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My immediate reaction to the news that Adrian Peterson will visit the Patriots on Monday is that the Patriots leaked the news on Sunday to send a message to LeGarrette Blount (Tom Curran of CSN New England thinks it’s a favor to Peterson’s agent), and that the Patriots aren’t currently interested in signing Peterson.

Reinforcing that mild-to-medium-heat take are comments from Patriots president Jonathan Kraft in the aftermath of the news that Peterson was facing child-abuse charges — news that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the release of the Ray Rice elevator video in September 2014.

“I just don’t get it, so it is hard to comment on,” Jonathan Kraft said at the time, via Mike Reiss of ESPN.com. “Other than the fact the way I was brought up and the way I brought my children is you don’t lay your hands on them. From where I sit it is completely unacceptable and as abhorrent as what we have been talking about [with Ray Rice]. It was interesting hearing some people raise a defense about it being cultural and I can’t comment on that.

“Everything I have heard about this makes you just physically uncomfortable as the other stuff we have talked about. And I think it is a real issue and in this case I think Adrian Peterson in his comments basically did say it is a thing he grew up with and is culturally what the norm is. I can’t comment on it because it is just so alien to me.”

Last week in Arizona, Patriots owner Robert Kraft explained in a visit to PFT Live that, as to personnel decisions (like whether to trade Jimmy Garoppolo), coach Bill Belichick has the power, but that he confers with ownership before doing anything big.

Signing Adrian Peterson would be pretty big, especially since ownership once renounced the rights to a third-round draft pick who had a history of violence against women. Bringing Peterson in for a visit is fairly big, too. Chances are that ownership knows what the plan is, and that ownership is OK with that plan. Whatever the plan may be.