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Before the NFL announced this morning that Adrian Peterson is suspended for the rest of the season, he and the league were battling over a separate but related issue regarding his status on the Commissioner’s Exempt List. On that issue, the league has won and Peterson has lost.

An arbitrator ruled today that the NFL was not required to remove Peterson from the Exempt List once he resolved his legal issue by pleading no contest to a charge of injuring his son. Peterson losing his grievance means that the arbitrator agrees with the league’s contention that the commissioner gets to decide when a player comes off the Commissioner’s Exempt List.

That means there’s no chance of Peterson being allowed to play pending the appeal of his suspension. Given that Peterson’s appeal will be heard by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell — the very man who just suspended him — it is extraordinarily unlikely that Peterson will play this year.

Peterson is running out of options, other than to accept his suspension and go through the process that Goodell has laid out that could result in him being reinstated in 2015.