To: Zygi Wilf:

Please fire Brad Childress.

He sucks and he's making the Vikings suck. You have a team with great potential, a team you thought had a chance of going to the Super Bowl and you're lucky to be 2-3. Giving Brad Childress the keys to this franchise is like hiring Lindsay Lohan as your limo driver. Yes, he may look like a good coach, but in reality he's just a hot mess incapable of doing the simplest of functions.

I know you might ask me, why fire him? He went 8-8 last year, winning 6 of the last 8, with Tavaris Jackson as the quarterback. That record was a fluke. When it counted, when you needed a win to make the playoffs, you choked like the New York Mets in September. You let the defense and Adrian Peterson carry you and when teams began to smarten up and put eight in the box, the offense had mud in the tires.

But enough of my one-liners and cliches. Why should you do the right thing and immediately fire Childress? Let me break it down:

1. The offense is terrible.
   • You rank 18thin the whole league at 20.2 points per game. The New Orleans game was the first time you broke the 20-point plateau and you're not really scoring withthat offense. How does a team with Adrian Peterson, Chester Taylor, Bernard Berrian & Sidney Rice manage only 7 offensive TD'sin 5 games?????? How can you win with QB's that average less than 200 yards per game while only completing 54.8% of your passes for a 73.3 QB rating?
   • Rice cakes have more imagination that your offense. Funny things about this is that Childress was an OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR!!!! But wait, didn't Andy Reid call the play in Philly? So, what did he do, squiggle lines in crazy patterns for Donovan McNabb? I digress. Here is the Viking offense in a nutshell, First down, RUN, Second Down, RUN, Third Down, if more than five yards, try to pass, if five yards or less, RUN. Fourth down, PUNT or FIELD GOAL. If there are eight in the box, RUN. If there are 11 in the box RUN. I think you get my point. If you don't you will when Adrian Peterson is injured by Week 11.
2. Your pass defensive is the human version of Swiss Cheese. Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Kerry Collins (didn't he does this in the 2000 NFC Championship game too?) and Peyton Manning have made fools of your 20th ranked pass defense. How many times do the Viking stop the run on 1st down only to allow the opponent to complete a 12 -15 yards pass for another 1st down? Too many. Brees was doing all night last night. The Vikings were outgained by over 130 yards in the first half. You have only intercepted the ball 4 times and only have 8 sacks in 5 games. I thought Jared Allen was supposed to solve this.
3. Special Teams are horrendous. 2 TD's given up to Bush last night (you should have learned the first time) and there were four other instances in which the Saints started in their own 40 (twice in Vikings territory). Maybe you should try kicking the ball out of bounds. It works on punt and it saves you some clock on kickoffs.
4. You coach not to lose. Wasn't this the same reason you benched Tavaris Jackson (a good move that should have been made two years ago)? Up 15-0 against Indy and you run 75% of the time and settle for Field Goals. Up 17-10 last night and you settle for a field goal instead of aggressively going for the touchdown. The TD drive to Berrian was the first sign of aggression since the days of Mike Tice (at least they were exciting when they lost).
5. You relied on TavarisJackson and expected to go to the Super Bowl with him. If the Vikings couldn't reach the Super Bowl with Daunte Culpepper, what made you think you could with Jackson?? He is consistently at the bottom in key QB stats. His decision making is more questionable than President Bush's and hasn't shown any ability that he could be a QB in this league. Yet, you made him the QB of the future, failed to bring in a decent free agent (Favre, Pennington, even Culpepper) and now we're stuck with Gus Frerotte.

Thankfully the run offense and defense is respectable, scoring 6 of the teams 9 TD's. But the Vikings are a proud franchise rich in offensive history. From the days of Fran Tarkenton and the Purple People Eaters, to Three Deep with Moss, Carter & Reed, this franchise has always been exciting and competitive. Brad Childresshas ruined that tradition and replaced it with a ho-hum lifestyle that is not even competitive.

Mr. Wilf, for the sake of the franchise, the fans and this season, please fire Brad Childress and let the Vikings return to the excitement that have while playing to win.