Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson will be suspended without pay for the rest of the season and will not be considered for reinstatement before April 15, 2015, for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy.

The league announced the highly anticipated decision Tuesday, and the players’ union responded by vowing to appeal immediately. With a grievance pending, it’s possible the Vikings could face a decision Sunday as to whether Peterson is active. Should the union-led grievance clear him to return while the appeal is pending, he would be eligible to play.

The NFL stated 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 wooden switch to discipline his son.

Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote in letter that Peterson does not “fully appreciate the seriousness of his conduct.”

Unless he wins a pending appeal, Peterson ends the 2014 season having played one game, rushing for 75 yards, and earning $7,602,941. Releasing Peterson before next season would result in $2.4 million in “dead money,” but by burying allegiances the Vikings recoup about $12 million in cap savings on the 2015 salary cap.

—Joshua Cribbs agreed to a contract with the Indianapolis Colts, who moved running back Ahmad Bradshaw to injured reserve and signed tight end Weslye Saunders.

Linebacker Victor Butler was waived to create the roster spot for Saunders, who rejoins the team in what could be an indication tight end Dwayne Allen (ankle) will miss Sunday’s game against the Jaguars.

Cribbs, 31, worked out for the Colts last week. He has been out of the NFL for one year, last playing with the New York Jets in a six-game stint last season.

Bradshaw will miss the rest of the season because of a fractured fibula, coach Chuck Pagano said. He had a team-high 425 rushing yards and was second on the roster with six touchdown catches before he was hurt Sunday against the New England Patriots.

—Running back LeGarrette Blount, unhappy with his role as a backup in Pittsburgh, was released by the Steelers on Tuesday.

Blount signed a two-year, $3.85 million contract with the Steelers as a free agent on March 28 and played in all 11 games this season, rushing for 266 yards and two touchdowns on 65 carries. He might have sealed his fate when he left the field before the end of the Steelers’ 27-24 victory over the Tennessee Titans on Monday night. He appeared only briefly in the game and had no carries for the first time this season.

With undersized rookie Dri Archer, who has rushed for 41 yards on eight carries, the only other running back on the roster, the Steelers promoted rookie Josh Harris to the 53-man roster. Harris was originally signed July 29 and joined the practice squad Aug. 31.

—Wide receiver Jason Avant questioned the Carolina Panthers’ play-calling after a 19-17 loss to the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday and two days later he’s looking for a new employer.

Avant was released Tuesday, with the Panthers activating fullback Mike Tolbert from short-term injured reserve, where he had been since suffering a leg injury on Sept. 21.

Carolina also signed wide receiver/cornerback De’Andre Presley to the active roster from the practice squad and placed offensive tackle Nate Chandler (knee) on injured reserve.

Avant opined after Sunday’s game that the Panthers were too conservative in the final minutes while playing for a potential winning field-goal attempt that Graham Gano missed. The 31-year-old Avant played in 11 games for the Panthers this season and had 21 receptions for 201 yards and one touchdown.

—Ten games into a two-year, $6.2 million contract, running back Ben Tate was waived Tuesday by the Cleveland Browns.

Tate, a backup to Arian Foster before reaching free agency in March 2014, signed with the Browns and opened the season as the starter. But he left the Week 1 game after four carries with a knee injury and never found his footing as rookies Terrance West and Isaiah Crowell carved their own niche in a committee backfield that Tate said he didn’t like.

Tate played in eight games and last week had two carries for minus-9 yards against Houston.

—The Arizona Cardinals placed rookie tight end Troy Niklas on season-ending injured reserve and added tight end Matthew Mulligan, a six-year NFL veteran, to the roster.

Niklas, selected in the second round of the 2014 NFL Draft from Notre Dame, came back from an early season ankle injury but suffered a high ankle sprain on Sunday in the Cardinals’ 14-6 win over the Detroit Lions. He played in seven games and had three catches for 38 yards.

Mulligan, released by Chicago on Sept. 16, saw action in two games and started one for the Bears. An undrafted free agent in 2008, Mulligan has 67 NFL games under his belt, including 25 as a starter. He has 16 career catches for 160 yards and two touchdowns.

—Jonas Gray’s impresssive rushing performance on Sunday night against the Indianapolis Colts got a little better on Tuesday.

After a review of the game, the NFL and the Elias Sports Bureau determined that the New England Patriots running back rushed for 201 yards on 37 carries rather than 199 yards on 38 attempts.

The official change in the statistics resulted from a play in the fourth quarter. On third-and-2 with 10:31 left, he rushed for minus-2 yards. But there was a personal foul penalty that the Patriots accepted, erasing the negative carry and boosting his yardage past 200.

The 200-yard rushing game is just the third in Patriots history. The others were 212 yards by Tony Collins on Sept. 18, 1983, against the New York Jets and Jim Nance on Oct. 30, 1966, against the Oakland Raiders.

—Quarterback A.J. McCarron has been sidelined since training camp with a shoulder injury, but the rookie from Alabama was cleared Tuesday to resume practicing this week with the Cincinnati Bengals.

McCarron has not practiced since he suffered the injury and was placed on the non-football injury list. The Bengals will have three weeks to evaluate McCarron before they decide whether or not to activate him for the final weeks of the season.

In other roster moves, the Bengals signed linebacker Terrell Manning to the practice squad and released rookie linebacker Justin Jackson.