Peterson's father says son's collarbone wasn't completely healed in the Fiesta Bowl.

Former University of Oklahoma running back Adrian Peterson said there is "nothing negative" lingering about his collarbone injury sustained last fall despite reports that some teams had concerns about drafting him.

"I'll be ready for minicamp and won't miss anything at all," Peterson told the Associated Press.

Peterson, third on OU's career rushing list with 4,045 yards, left school after his junior season and is expected to be taken early in the first round Saturday in the NFL Draft, perhaps within the top three picks.

A SportsIllustrated.com report Wednesday cited two unnamed NFL team sources with revealing that Peterson's broken collarbone, originally sustained on Oct. 14, had been reinjured in the Fiesta Bowl.

Peterson did not answer phone calls or return text messages from the Tulsa World, but he confirmed to the AP on Wednesday what he earlier confirmed to NFL medical personnel at the scouting combine in February, that he did hurt his collarbone on New Year's Day against Boise State.

"Yes, but it was not a re-break," he said. "It wasn't completely healed at the time, but it was solid. I hurt it, but I didn't break it again."

Peterson's father, Nelson, told the World in a phone interview Thursday the injury was a matter of semantics.

"I wouldn't say reinjured," Nelson Peterson said.

"The way I look at that situation is that Adrian really shouldn't have played in that bowl game. But he wanted to play."

Peterson broke his collarbone on Oct. 14 against Iowa State. His return was originally set at 6-8 weeks, then amended to 4-6 weeks, but he wasn't cleared to practice until Dec. 18, more than nine weeks later. He played in the Fiesta Bowl 11 weeks after the injury.

Nelson Peterson said it's no surprise that reports of his son's injury status are surfacing now, in the final days before the draft.

"All kinds of stuff is going to come out this time of year," Nelson Peterson said. "People are jockeying for position. Teams are wanting him to fall to them, so it's all coming, rumors and different things. You've just got to be careful with what happens."

Peterson apparently aggravated the injury during the Fiesta Bowl, but still scored a 25-yard touchdown run on the Sooners' final offensive play.

SI.com quoted a team executive as saying Peterson needed another surgical procedure, which would sideline him "two or three months."

Peterson told AP his injury was "95 percent healed," but the SI.com source said Peterson's collarbone isn't as healed as it should be "because of him reinjuring it in the bowl game." The source also said the injury wasn't severe enough "to take him off the boards," but added Peterson's "straight-up running style" has made him "a bit injury-prone, and now you've got a situation where you're drafting damaged goods."

SI.com quoted another team source as saying, "it's one of those things that everyone in the league knows about. He reinjured it in the Fiesta Bowl, but he kept playing."

In a mid-January phone interview, Steve Eudey -- a long-time Peterson family friend and one of Peterson's youth league football coaches -- said Adrian Peterson had revealed to him there was more to the collarbone injury than just a break, and that there was a strong reason his healing time was drawn out.

"What he said was, the reason he didn't force Coach (Bob) Stoops to let him come back earlier is there was a possibility of him reinjuring some nerve that runs along there if he got it re-injured," Eudey said Thursday. "That would have been career-threatening. So he didn't want to push it."

Said Nelson Peterson, "I haven't ever heard anything about that one."

"The doctors all said they looked forward to it being healed very shortly," Peterson told the AP.

John E. Hoover 581-8384
john.hoover@tulsaworld.com