Brad Childress Needs To Be Fired

That’s it, I’ve had it with Brad Childress.

For five years, Childress has been the definition of mediocrity: despite having among the most talented teams in the league, it took a knight in shining armor (or washed-up, drama-soaked, publicist-sniffing buffoon, depending on which season you’re talking about) to keep him around as head coach. He’s smug, inflexible and virtually unable to work with his players. And now, five years into his “Kick !@@” offense, Childress has managed to throw away another perfectly effective Vikings team.

If anything, the Randy Moss experiment has proved that Childress is completely and utterly incapable of dealing with dissent. While the story about Moss berating the caterer, with Childress flying in as a savior for the little man, is nice, it’s apparent that Moss’s actions during and after the Patriot game sent Childress over the edge. While some anger is justified, throwing away a third-round pick is ridiculous. At least Childress could admit that he’d made a mistake in trading for Moss.

But he hasn’t. And he won’t. Childress is physically, emotionally, and intellectually incapable of admitting his own faults. When he mismanages a game, blows through timeouts, and puts barrier after barrier in the way of the Vikings’ success, he throws a player under the bus—usually the player that has most recently spoken out against him.

All of this would be fine (or at least tolerable) if he were a great game manager. But, to put it politely, he’s not. He employs his patented “Kick @##” offense (no doubt developed by a high school gym teacher) that consists of run, run, pass, and then punt. It’s lucky that Chris Kluwe has been such a great punter or…my gosh…we might lose the battle of field position!

To make matters worse, Childress has stuck by pet project Tarvaris Jackson. And while I could be proved ultimately wrong, Jackson has been very bad. To make matters worse, Childress bent over backwards to bring back the ageless wonder Brett Favre. Now Favre has been playing poorly (probably because Childress has the huge offensive line trying to zone block…something generally meant for smaller, more agile lines), and guess what? He threw him under the bus after a few very poor games.

At this point, there are dog catchers that would make better head coaches. But the Vikings have an easy in-house solution: promote Leslie Frazier. Frazier has been among the league’s most effective defensive coordinators, and has the respect of his players—something that has mysteriously eluded Childress.