My "rational" thoughts:
What if WHAT IF the Harvin "situation" isn't a situation at all? What if what we've been hearing from Pete on a weekly basis is exactly 100% the truth? WOW. Mind blown!
Just imagine for a second. . .
Harvin hurts his hip. Gets surgery. Recovers as fast as he can. Is feeling pretty good. Maybe not 100%.
So we play him vs. Minnesota as a check to see how he's feeling and how the hip holds up, and to really evaluate how he feels after a game situation (the problem with this theory is that we did let him return a kick, but we were short bodies).
He's sore after that game and things just don't feel quite right. The team decides that the recovery process is actually going to take longer than they thought, and unfortunately the contact in the game set him back just a bit. He becomes week to week. Seems like a rational explanation.
Now he's had lots of time to recover. Still not doing well enough to feel like putting him out against live bullets is a great idea until he gets a couple weeks of practice in the very least, to be on the safe side. This means that he would have had to have started practicing right after the NY Giants game to even make it in time for our last game of the season the other day, if they wanted at least 2 weeks of practice. The Giants game was a month out from when he played against the Vikings, a reasonable amount of time for him to sit, recover. but he's just not ready to go.
Is it really that unreasonable to think that he's just needed longer to recover than first thought, and that they are being 100% truthful in saying they just don't want him back before he's ready?
There is the theory that if he's even remotely ready, we should have brought him back to have a better shot at clinching the division/HFA in one of these past two games, but if you are an NFL coach and you already know you are in the playoffs, is it really worth the risk to beef up your offense for a game or two, then find out it's too soon and he gets hurt and can't help you in the playoffs? Or would you rather make it to the playoffs and hopefully stand behind your #1 D, get into the dance, and then get him out there when you're more confident in the recovery?
I do know the following:
Percy isn't being held off IR to "fool" any other teams, or have them waste time game-planning for him. For starters, teams don't spend an inordinate amount of time planning for one guy in general. They may focus on some of the top players in the league but it's not like having to do so is suddenly going to make the rest of their plan fall into the toilet. At this point in the year all teams are beat up. Active roster spots are precious. So is time. The team doesn't have the roster spots or the time to deal with trolling a guy around on the active roster just to force an hour or two of extra game planning.
Percy also isn't declining to play because he doesn't want too, or is lazy or any of that other crap. The guys been nothing but a football player for years. If that was any part of the reason, Pete and John wouldn't tolerate it and neither would the rest of the guys on the team.
So really for all of the talk, I think the situation is exactly what Pete says it's been. Now if he comes back to practice and re-aggravates things and hits IR i'm sure people will freak out with more conspiracy theories but that's all they are.