nice one.

where’s the steel vs flesh qoute? might come in handy during the superbowl vs pittsburgh =p

And in terms of the talent (2nd or 3rd highest payroll in the NFL) he’s been given, it’s not like he’s overachieved and become the best team in the NFL.

Chilly was very fortunate to find AP at #7 in April of 2007, but of course the only reason his team was picking 7th overall was because he’d torn apart a winning team and gone 6-10.

You summed up how to evaluate a coach perfectly. Thanks for writing that.

I’ve been harping on Chili a lot on all these pro/anti coach posts and it makes me sound more upset with him than I really am this year. I know he’s improved as a coach, but how much I don’t really know. I want to see us play through the season first to see if he can really prove me wrong about him.

To me this is an important factor. Can the coach adjust his pristine battleplan so that it works with the talent he has available to him, or does his plan suffer because he doesn’t have the people to make it work? In this category, Chilly gets a D because his method of adapting his plan to the team’s abilities has been to dumb things down, not to maximize the talent he has available and put that talent to best use.

Or to put it another way… When his square peg is confronted by a round hole, rather than use a different peg, Chilly just uses a bigger hammer and accepts that it will take more time to force that peg to fit. (don’t get all Freudian on this!)

Does he get the most out of his players? NO. Not by payroll vs. performance, anyway.

Do his offensive schemes work? Only with a HoF QB at the helm so far. Defensively, the Vikings’ schemes couldn’t get the most out of Darren Sharper, a likely HoFer who is thriving again now that he’s out of the Vikings’ system.

ST coaching: this was TERRIBLE last year, and Chilly hired Ferraro. There is a new ST coach in town this year, and I wonder whether Childress did that on his own or with considerable pressure from Zygi.

Surviving without Winfield: because of the low quality of opponents, mostly. I saw Karl Paymah play with his back to the ball, and that is not a sign of good coaching but perhaps not directly attributable to Childress.

I see that you dodged the whole TJ vs. Frerotte vs. someone better who was never properly pursued question which dogged the team for 2 years and 3 games or so.

The Vikings’ secondary is still terrible after acquiring an expensive FA (M. Williams) and kicking Sharper out of town to start the so far underwhelming Tyrell Johnson. Meanwhile, Cedric Griffin is still playing out of position and was even given a big contract extension. The secondary has been the biggest defensive weakness as long as Childress has been in Minnesota, and the big decisions have been to lock down 3 or all 4 positions to long-term contracts without really earning them.

In my mind, that adds up to a C at best.

To be fair, a change in the playbook such as the one going from Tice to Chilly generally takes a year or two to implement and to have your players buy into it.

Childress is NOT the reason we are 7-1. Well, not directly. It is not his coaching, it is the talent he has put on the field.

The Arizona Cardinals were one play from winning the Superbowl and have put a better team on the field this year. Yet, they aren’t as successful. Do you then say “They have a bad coach?” or do you say “They aren’t talented so its not the coaches fault.”

A team consists of everyone. Players and coaches. Is the coach getting top effort from all players? Childress has been more flexible in his play calling this year because he has a QB who can execute under pressure. Our defense is strong so we can Blitz more. We can make up for Winfield because we are able to rush with 4 down lineman.

You might find Childress to be a little more conservative a play caller than you like. I can respect that opinion. But to not give him credit for coaching the players well, in spite of BB’s injury and Winfield’s absense is just not fair.

My only coaching complaint is the O-Line not being taught how to open up better run lanes for AP. I just can’t find the push needed very often. On the other hand the coach has taught a new center and tackle how to protect an immoble QB very well.

I have to give Chilly credit for a good season so far.

Posted something similar (not as much detail on this year’s team, but comparing this team to the 90s and 70s teams) on the Under the Radar post….

Agree that this team is THE most talent that we have had ever….we should be 7-1, no doubt….What makes these performers great though is TEAM….

One thing I learned very fast in the military, you have to count on that guy to your left and to yur right, as they are doing as well…It can literally mean the difference between life or death for the unit….This is the case with NFL teams….many have talented stars and some have a lot….the number of those sorts guarantees nothing and has less to do I believe with success than the team effort….

You have to have someone/something that brings synergy to the unit….It can be a combination of things (kind of like that “sweet spot” on the tennis racket, where all the strings come together to give that bounce you look for)….This is what we have and are watching….It is a combination of Favre, Chilly, talent (too many to list), desire, belief, practice, and execution…

A real pleasure to watch, if at times heart wrenching to the max…..

To Chilly and the entire Viking team, I say SKOL and enjoy your down time….Be ready to get to it when you come back…Oh yeah, watch for boats during this weekend!

SKOL!

chester, sidney, percy, favre, jared, hutch, AP

all he inherited was winfield and the williamses. no one on offense.

ahem. redskins. seattle. thank god chilly didn’t sign derrick anderson to a 40 million dollar contract.

not giving him credit for our roster is ridiculous.

Chilly deserves all the credit a HC should get for a 7-1 team.

The problem is I don’t think there is a set amount of credit for a team with any record. The Colts are undefeated and no one is giving their rookie coach a lot of love for doing it because most people realize he had a really good system and talent pool in place when he took over (and by talent pool I mean Peyton Manning). The SBNation poll has Josh McDaniels listed as rookie head coach of the year because of all the turmoil he had to navigate coming into this season and he still has his team at 6-1. At the same time no one is really upset with Schwartz in Detroit because they’re just happy to have won a single game. Meanwhile Jeff Fisher may not make it through the year even though he’s the longest tenured coach and has always performed well, there just isn’t anyone else to blame in Tennessee for their epic collapse.

I don’t call for the head of Studwell for draft mistakes or the GM for bad contracts (unless they start happening as often as they do in Oakland), the credit for those things has to be shared. The head coach should get some credit for good moves in those departments as well, but because it is shared you can’t evaluate the coach solely on those things since you can’t say what his level of involvement was over the others.

But there are other parts of the team that a head coach claims as his own. With Childress it was clear we were getting an offensive scheming genius, who could forge franchise quarterbacks from nothing more than a Division 2 school and the trimmings from his own mustache.

The quarterback situation speaks for itself.

Offensively, a lot of people have talked about how awful the KAO was and how it works now with Favre. Personally I don’t think the KAO was ever awful, because I don’t think it was ever anything. It’s just an offense, like any other offense in the league; a hodgepodge of formations and plays that have been successful for teams in the past, with a big nod to Bill Walsh and the WCO (I’ll type Jerry Burns name here for all you fan boys out there). You may have heard Favre say a few hundred times how well he knows this offense despite never having Chili as a O-coordinator or head coach. Or you may have heard Gruden telling you the names of the plays we run, and how we run them. In other words Chili’s neither Chili, or any other head coach’s offense is a big secret.

What makes a coach’s offense good is the adjustments he makes to it to amplify the strengths and hide the weaknesses of his team, while further tweaking it to do the opposite to his opponents weak to weak. That, to me, is the most fundamental part of coaching; that and a good amount of motivation and identity guidance. I just haven’t seen any of that from Childress.

From the day Belichick came into the dome and passed all over our defense while grabbing the wrists of our offense and slapping us silly with our own hands; repeating, “Why are you hitting yourself? You should really stop hitting yourself. HAHAHA!”

After the game Childress said they had probably just given the league a blueprint for beating the Vikings. And that’s what kills me, they had, he knew it and he proceeded to do nothing about it the rest of the year but blame his players for not being able to execute his brilliant offense.

We all went into the season thinking a West Coast style offense (read short passing game) would be perfect for a team with a weaker armed veteran quarterback (Johnson) and a tight-end that had lead our team in receptions the past two years (Wiggins). But the only play that stood out in Childress’s play book was the hook route to gain 4 yards on 3rd and 5. With the receiver catching the ball in stride as he’s running back toward the line of scrimmage.

The difference between this year and previous years is that we have so much talent on the offensive side of the ball we really don’t need to tweak the offense from weak to weak, we can beat you running or passing and do both with authority. If Childress can just manage not to trip over himself our players should be able to win the game without him.

In closing. Do you think there was a reason Andy Reid didn’t let Childress call plays in Philidelphia? And if not, do you think there is a reason he did let Chili’s successor there call plays? And if not, is your name Brad Childress?

They weren’t all bad. They left: EJ Henderson, Bryant McKinnie, Kevin Williams, Pat Wiliams, Winfield, Herrera, Kleinsasser, and some other guys I think.

That said, the Vikings took a huge step forward when Tice was released and Childress was hired.

i give him props for his part in the personnel moves but deep in my gut i know this guy is the second coming of marty schottenheimer.

my kids will be calling it chillyball instead of martyball.

Farva-dude, welcome back! :)