Vikings Owner Zygi Wilf
Earlier this year, Zygi Wilf and the Minnesota Vikings extended the contract of their Head Coach, Brad Childress. At the time, the Vikings had one loss and were firing on all cylinders with Brett Favre under center. Now, the Minnesota Vikings have lost three out of their last four games, all in December. Much has been talked about lately concerning the Cowboys’ woes in December. Why haven’t people been looking at the Vikings under Childress? While he hasn’t been as inept as the Cowboys had been, his December record is 8-11. That means of his 21 losses (including playoffs) as Vikings’ head coach, 12 of them have come after December 1st.
His playoff record as a head coach is just one game, but it was a bad one. Not only did he lose, he lost as the 3rd seed in the NFC Playoffs at home to the 6th seed Eagles. To be the favored team, be at home, and be such a higher seed shows that he did not prepare his team to play that game.
Prior to this season, Childress was known by many as one of the worst play-callers in the league. His plays and games were predictable. He stuck with players he never should have. The Vikings traded two 3rd round picks to move up into the 2nd round of the 2006 NFL Draft to select Tarvaris Jackson. Although Jackson had brief (very brief) moments of potential, he proved that he was not ready to be a starting quarterback in the NFL. In fact, he still hasn’t proven that he can be a starter anywhere. Childress stuck with Jackson and refused to go after free agent quarterbacks like Drew Brees and failed to even attempt a trade for Jay Cutler this past offseason.
Vikings Head Coach Brad Childress
Fast forward to this year. He bent over backwards to get Brett Favre to come to Minnesota, whether he would admit any of it publicly or not. He even personally picked him up from the airport. If that didn’t show Brett who had the power in their relationship, it was the ability for Favre to keep himself from getting pulled from a game. Brad Childress does not have control of his team.
This begs the question, why did Childress get an extension before the season was over? The Vikings head coach has not yet won a playoff game. He was under contract for another year. He has not proven that he can win later in the season. The only things Brad Childress has going for him are that the team record has improved each year under him and that he was the head coach when Brett Favre was brought in. Childress doesn’t get credit for that in some minds. Some of the other Vikings players and Darrell Bevell deserve far more credit for bringing Favre to Minnesota than Childress does. Even if Childress’ contract was up at the end of the year, who would go after him? In the last 7 years, an average of 6 coaches have been fired each year. This year, there are far less coaches that are likely to be fired. At that, there are better coaches than Childress without jobs, like Mike Shanahan and Bill Cowher. So why exactly was Childress’ term in Minnesota extended through 2013? While we can’t know the answer to that, what we do know is that Marty Shottenheimer was fired in 2006 after going 14-2 and losing in the playoffs. That is exactly what should happen in Minnesota should this late season collapse continue and the Vikings get ousted from the playoffs early.
