MINNEAPOLIS -- If this is indeed it for Percy Harvin -- if Thursday's news of the receiver's retirement plans isn't followed by the kind of precipitous mood shift of which Harvin is capable -- the receiver's career will likely be remembered more for his enigmatic behavior than his electric talent. And Harvin's departure from the Minnesota Vikings might well be remembered as the moment when the former permanently eclipsed the latter.

It's easy to forget it now, in sepia-toned reflections on Adrian Peterson's magnificent 2012 season, but the Vikings' offensive player generating the most MVP buzz during the first half of that season was Harvin, not Peterson. He caught 49 passes in the first six games of that season, creating one of the most indelible highlights of the first half when he danced away from four defenders on his way to a 10-yard touchdown off a bubble screen against the Tennessee Titans, and brought a 105-yard kick return back for a touchdown against the Detroit Lions. After going 3-13 in 2011, the Vikings won early in 2012 while easing Peterson back into action following ACL surgery largely because they could lean on Harvin. His migraine problems were behind him, he claimed he was in good spirits after veiled shots at the team the previous summer and he was making a compelling case for a big payday after the season.

That case, though, was only ever as strong as the Vikings' belief they could trust Harvin, and by November of that season, the foundation had shifted. Harvin went back into a game against the Seattle Seahawks with hamstring and ankle injuries, yelled at coach Leslie Frazier on the sideline and appeared in the locker room on crutches the day after the game. It turned out to be the last time reporters saw Harvin in the Vikings' locker room; he was placed on injured reserve a month later, after he'd reportedly gotten into a confrontation with Frazier, and was traded to the Seahawks the following March.

Peterson has routinely called Harvin the most talented player he has ever played with, and had the receiver been able to co-exist with teammates, coaches and front office executives, the Vikings could still be powering their offense on those two singular talents. But by 2012, Harvin had already clashed with former coach Brad Childress -- in an altercation in which he reportedly threw a weight at Childress -- and if he couldn't get along with the genteel Frazier, the thinking went, he would struggle to mesh with anyone. That sentiment turned out to be true, as Harvin became a malcontent even in Seattle's free-spirited locker room, and played a combined 13 games for the Jets and Bills, accumulating more injuries and questions than production along the way.

Maybe Harvin was always going to burn out quickly, shifting to the next person, place or thing once he decided he couldn't live with the status quo any longer. Still, as blinding of a talent as he was -- the speed and grace of a Bugatti joined with the compact strength of a forklift -- it's striking how many teams also decided they could live without Harvin. Teams around the NFL are often willing to tolerate a certain amount of insolence from their receivers, but even by that standard, Harvin played for four teams in the last four years. The Vikings haven't completely replaced him -- their immediate attempts to do so, with Greg Jennings and Cordarrelle Patterson, have mostly fizzled -- and the Seahawks aren't exactly stocked with dynamic receivers. But when those two teams met in the playoffs in January, at the conclusion of the first full season when neither had employed Harvin, their similarities only buttressed their shared realization that both could survive without him.

In the end, Harvin's greatest contributions to Minnesota might be the things left in his wake -- the memories of his spellbinding rookie season that almost ended in the Super Bowl, the snapshots of his virtuosic first half in 2012 and the bounty the Vikings got back for Harvin when the Seahawks decided to take a chance on him. Seattle got a star turn from Harvin in Super Bowl XLVIII, but they probably would have won the game without him, and the Vikings turned two of their three picks for Harvin into Xavier Rhodes and Jerick McKinnon.

That tends to be the way things work with supernovas, when brilliance burns out into nothingness through a cataclysmic final explosion. The last time Harvin looked like he could contribute anything more long-lasting was in Minnesota. In retrospect, his departure from the Vikings might have signaled the beginning of the end.