Stop me if you've heard this one before: It's a very disappointing season to be a fan of the Minnesota Vikings.
Seven games into a highly-anticipated year, the USS Viking is taking on water in ever-increasing quantities. Yesterday's loss left the team sitting at 2-5 and you'd be hard pressed to come up with any positives from the team's play. The quarterback was a bit better, but the receivers couldn't get open with enough frequency or hold onto the ball when they did. The defensive backfield played better than I anticipated, but that's likely the result of a gameplan focused on minimizing risk. As a result, the pass rush was nonexistent and Tom Brady had all the time he needed to chuck the ball around.
Now the schedule softens up considerably, but there is no indication that any turnaround is about to occur, at least not one of the magnitude need to reach 9-10 win neighborhood needed for the playoffs. Popular opinion has long held that the Vikings winning ways of the last few years were accomplished more IN SPITE of their coaching than BECAUSE of it. While I've tried to give Brad Childress the benefit of the doubt, pointing out that winning in the NFL is no easy task, things are starting to wear thin. It's the easiest thing in the world to throw everything at the feet of the coach when tough scheduling, injuries and just plain bad luck, so I'm trying not to be knee-jerk...but he's lost me.
There's no one among us who'd call him a great tactician, despite what we were told upon his arrival about the game plans he crafted in Philadelphia. There's no one who'd call him an inspiring or colorful leader, given his monotone press conferences and generally flavorless appearance. And he is certainly not the quarterback guru that some (most notably himself) appeared to think that he was, look no further than the ongoing charade that is Tavaris Jackson. But what you could say about Chilly is: He had control of the room.
In the game of ego management and millionaire motivation, key to any professional sports endeavor, Brad Childress seemed to know how to push the right buttons to keep his teams focused and ready to play. One can't overlook the huge upgrade in resources he had over his predecessors, or the self-inflicted wounds that his ego inflicted on offense by remaining undermanned at QB, but at least you could say he knew how to work with what he had. Over the last season and a half, that reputation has been turned on it's head, because like most of us fans out there, Chilly got desparate.
It started with Favre, and the new set of rules that were crafted for him. Continued into the swing for the fences that was Randy Moss this season. And it almost worked. Unfortunately the history books are packed with near-misses, and with today's release of Moss, following his press conference tirade after yesterday's game, the chickens have truly come home to roost. I don't know who made the call on bringing him back, but based on what has happened since he returned, Childress must've been strong-armed. You have to be one of two things to think that using Randy as a decoy was going to end in harmony: Naive or stupid. Contrary to popular opinion, I do not think Brad Childress is stupid, so I'm rather befuddled here.
I mean alert the media, Randy Moss went off in a press conference, why should this be a shock? If you don't get him involved in the gameplan, he's going to check out, he's going to pop off, that's what he does. Instead of heeding a decade of past history, you spent four games antagonizing the man. Again, what did you think was going to happen? Please don't take this as a defense of his behavior, anyone who's a fan of sports should find characters like this revolting. Randy Moss represent every ugly truth we don't want to acknowledge about our obsession with sports, every me-first jerk out there who gets special treatment because of their athletic abilities. But there are two things that need to be acknowledged here:
The offense was better with him here.
You bought the ticket, now take the ride.
Instead we cut bait, in "too little, too late" fashion. Instead of trying to salvage what we could out of a bad situation, by clearing the air and making a commitment to doing what should've been done, we gave up, throwing away a 3rd round pick in the process. This may help Chilly's bruised ego heal faster, but it's not going to help with winning football games. Rules have been bent and broken, team unity is most likely hanging by a thread, and things aren't going to improve any time soon. The coach has no clothes and has very likely lost this team. My apologies for that mental image.
At the end of the day Vikings fans, we probably are all getting what we deserved. We quite literally made a deal with the devil here and it backfired, trying to paper over it with a second unholy addition just made things worse. Brett Favre has been breaking our hearts for the better part of two decades, why should it change just because he's wearing a purple jersey? Randy Moss already quit on us once when he didn't like what was going on, why should the second time around be any different?
Things have been ugly, now they're just getting sad, but easier to handle when they were seen coming a mile off. The whole thing just brings a lot of fundamental questions to mind. Did Childress ever want Moss on this team in the first place? Would Childress still be coaching here at all if not for Favre coming to save him? Could Mike Tice, a guy everyone laughed at, have done just as well or better with all the resources the current regime has been handed? Which is more important, the success that's been had over the past couple years, or that fact that the seeming arrogance of the coach has led to the current house-of-cards situation?
Or is it all just pointless to ponder?
Times like this it's good to be a diehard, because there's always the chance to sit back, bide time, and wait til next year.
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