NFL executive vice president Jeff Pash defended the suspension of Adrian Peterson and said the league isn’t trying to end the Minnesota Vikings running back’s career.

Pash made his comments on ESPN Radio’s “Mike and Mike” on Wednesday, responding to criticism on the radio show from Peterson’s attorney, Rusty Hardin.

“The critical component of what the commissioner (Roger Goodell) did yesterday was put in place a program that will help Mr. Peterson succeed. It will help him extend his career,” Pash said.

“We’re not trying to end his career, we want to extend his career. We want to have a great player on the field with the confidence that he won’t face these kind of issues again.”

On Tuesday, the NFL suspended Peterson without pay for at least the remainder of the season for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy related to his child-abuse case in Texas. Peterson pleaded no contest to charges for the discipline of his 4-year-old son, who suffered cuts, marks and bruising to his thighs, back and on one of his testicles, according to court records.

Peterson will not be considered for NFL reinstatement before April 15, 2015.

Hardin criticized the NFL’s punishment and compared the league’s approach in his client’s case to its handling of Ray Rice’s domestic violence case.

“I’m just amazed the way they just keep making these things up as they go along,” Hardin said earlier on the ESPN radio show. “They looked bad in the earlier things. With Ray Rice, they handled things badly, publicly. And now, they’ve just decided to make Adrian the scapegoat for all of their past failings.”

Peterson is appealing the suspension on the grounds that he was told that he would receive credit for his time on the commissioner’s exempt list, which he was placed on Sept. 18. Peterson was paid his full salary while on that list but filed a grievance, arguing he should have been reinstated from the exempt list as soon as his child abuse case was resolved Nov. 4.

A union-led grievance that sought to clear Peterson to return while the appeal is pending was denied by arbitrator Shyam Das on Tuesday night.

Sources confirmed to ESPN that Peterson was told by an NFL official that his time on the exempt list would be considered time served.

“This has cost him his reputation. It’s cost him millions of dollars. Every endorser dropped him like a hotcake. Next to Peyton Manning, he was the second (most) heavily endorsed athlete in the NFL,” Hardin said.

“He’s lost all of that, all because of the public’s outcry, the people’s perception of this. He’s paid for that. And now the NFL wants to come along and keep him from working an entire year? And everybody says well, it didn’t cost him any money. What do you mean it didn’t cost him any money? It’s cost him current, it’s cost him future.”

Peterson signed a $100 million contract with the Vikings on Sept. 10, 2011. That deal included $36 million in guaranteed money — a total that has been completely paid by the Vikings. It is growing more likely the franchise will distance itself from the All-Pro running back.

Hardin maintains that Peterson “made a mistake.”

“It wasn’t child abuse. Nobody that knows him and his children believes he ever intentionally hurts his children and abuses,” Hardin said.

Pash said Peterson hasn’t actually had any time served because he was getting paid each week while he was on the commissioner’s exempt list.

“He hasn’t served any time. He was on paid leave,” Pash said. “He was being paid for the entire time that he was out. In no corporate setting is that considered discipline. We don’t consider it discipline here. We didn’t take his money back as part of the action that the commissioner decided on yesterday. So the concept of ‘time served,’ I think, is a misnomer here.”

The NFL stated Tuesday that Peterson’s suspension comes as a result of “an incident of abusive discipline that he inflicted on his four-year-old son.” Peterson settled the legal matter in a Texas court when he pleaded no contest to a lesser charge of misdemeanor reckless assault earlier this month. He was indicted in September on a felony charge of injury to a child for using a tree switch to discipline his son.

Goodell wrote in letter to Peterson, from which excerpts were used in Tuesday’s NFL statement, that Peterson does not “fully appreciate the seriousness of his conduct.”

“You have shown no meaningful remorse for your conduct,” Goodell’s letter said. “When indicted, you acknowledged what you did but said that you would not ‘eliminate whooping my kids’ and defended your conduct in numerous published text messages to the child’s mother. You also said that you felt ‘very confident with my actions because I know my intent.'”