Wade Out, Greg Lewis In

Wade did everything he could to stay on the team, and it’s not like he performed poorly the last two years. Lewis has only 127 catches in his six-year career. The only things that make sense to me are maybe we signed Lewis for much less than Wade’s restructured $1.5 million deal or Chilly loves him from the Philly days like I mentioned.

Harvin, Rice, Reynaud, J.Johnson are all better than Wade and deserve the spots. Berrian will be okay. I hope. I havent heard anything to support the contrary and the signing of Greg Lewis is an upgrade over Wade so it doesn’t mean Berrian is gonna miss more time based upon that alone.

I imagine that it was easy to be loyal to Childress when Chilly wanted to prove that Wade was a #1 WR in the NFL, but not so easy lately. Perhaps Greg Lewis replacing Bobby Wade is the new Billy McMullen replacing the roster spot left open by Marcus Robinson’s Christmas Eve cut (more or less). Now Chilly has a new WR who is 100% loyal, able to do everything right in practice, but never whine about too little time on the field. Many utterances of, “Percy, be more like Greg!” may follow in practices, which is surely absurd to any thinking fans out there.

Troy Williamson is a starter again after leading the NFL in preseason receiving yards. Could some of his demise have been because he was ordered to be more like Billy “StudMcmuffin” McMullen in practices?

It doesn’t seem like Childress likes WRs very much in general: the blowup with T.O., despite his influence on Chilly’s most successful offense ever; T-Willy (who deserved most of it in the end, or so it seemed); Marcus Robinson; Bobby Wade was only on his good side when Chilly was the only coach in the NFL offering him such an opportunity; all of the extra visiting with Percy Harvin, who he may actually like since he plans to use him primarily as a returner and #2 RB to help disguise the fact that he’s one of those receiver types. From day 1, the question about Childress was whether he can actually deal with very talented players, and now he’s treating a marginally good player badly, too.

the 4th reciever doesn’t matter… we dont use 4 wideouts lol

I was going to say the same thing. Cutting B.Wade 3-days before kickoff is a real shady move by the Vikings.
I know Wade had his share of drops, but he still led the team in receptions for 2 consecutive years. He’s a solid run-blocker, he can take a hit, and was willing to take a pay-cut to stay on the team.
I think he deserves better treatment than that!
  

This story combines my favorite things about our coach. His propensity to stab his players in the back (look for the sentence that says Christmas Eve halfway down the page).

And his need to sign Philadelphia has beens, with nothing left in the tank (or lookup Kelly Holcomb if you prefer).

You know I was almost starting to forget about our worthless head coach, with all the hype around this season. I can’t wait to see the fireworks between him and Favre when Childress tries to take credit for developing Favre the same way he developed McNabb. And he starts telling Favre how to run his “Kick Ass Offense™”

We would have been contenders last year with a real coach. With the money the Wilfs are spending on players and with the luck of Peterson falling to us in the draft, we’re an underachieving team with this coach.

Anyway here’s a classy quote from Wade at the bottom of the Tribune article about how he was looking forward to the season:

“That’s the nice part about it,” Wade said of the Vikings’ depth at wide receiver. “Especially with the addition of Percy. It was that one element that we were missing. Guys can do it, but not at the level he can do it. It’s the same thing with [Bernard] Bernard. We can put guys in that position, but guys aren’t going to be able to excel [like he did]. Same thing with Sidney [Rice] in the red zone. Me, a lot of stuff finding zones, every down blocking. Those type of things. We have a lot of guys that are playing a role in this offense. Everybody has a role and the better we understand that the better we’ll play together.”

Sorry Bobby, if you think leading this team in receptions is enough to keep your roster spot go talk to Marcus Robinson.

Lewis is a cheaper, somewhat experienced, deep threat backup for Berrian. Rice is the tall, possession guy (in theory), and we have a couple young’uns to bring along the way.

the guy led the team in receptions 2 years in a row and is a good downfield blocker. Not to mention he is a guy that the other players liked having in the locker room. I didn’t think the world of Wade, nor did I ever think he would be a huge part of the offense, but replacing him with a lame, no-namer AFTER he agreed to take a paycut and a reduced role just rubs me the wrong way.

But, to each their own. I have come to realize over the past 3 months that my opinions on Vikings matters seem to differ from many other’s. I just don’t see how this is a smart, football decision. That’s all.

Usually when a player leads the team in receptions,(2 consecutive years) they hold-out for a raise.

Because Bobby is older and Darius and Jaymar are very young.

I think they know someone will pick up Reynaud or Johnson.

They want to keep them for the future, but I to am at a loss for this decision.

It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me strictly from an “on the field” point of view.

Berrian and Rice on the outside, Harvin in the slot, and Shianco either split out or at the TE position. I don’t think the Vikings will run many four wide sets because the Shankmeister has turned into such a possession threat.

I never want to see them.

If Favre didn’t make locker room schims…this just might.

I read a facebook post from Kevin Seifert today that said the Vikings locker room was extremely down and quiet today and Berrian was wearing Wade’s #19.

I understand that its a business, but it can still be sad. I hope none of the players take it too hard, and everyone can keep their head up just fine. Nobody likes to see a friend cut so unexpectedly like that.

thanks for brining it up! Good point.

Anyone know anything about Lewis’ special team abilities? Could this have really been a ST-oriented decision with so many other supposed, “special team aces” kept on the 53 man roster? I think our special teams unit looks FAR improved even without taking Wade or Lewis into consideration. Hmmmm…

I didn’t know he was that versitile. I thought it was an even swap. It still bugs me though…you ask a guy to take a pay cut then axe him 2 weeks later. Karma is going to Effe somebody up in vikings management.

And I am glad we kept Reynaud and Johnson, but do you think that Greg Lewis has more upside and playmaking skills than Wade?

“The hurricane’s name was Hurricane All Day?

Ahh…All Day turdy-seven, hurricane tree."

yup

Why are you going so far out of your way to give Childress credit for everything positive on this team?

Signing Hutch, well lets see, would you like to sign the best left guard in football to your team? Let me think, umm… yes. It’s up to ownership, money managers and lawyers to put the money on the table and write the poison pills to get it done. Sign Jared Allen. Again would you like the best pass rushing D-End in the NFL? These weren’t brilliant moves by Chili. All he had to do was say yes and let the suits do the work.

If cutting Sharper because he can’t play his position was such a brilliant move why didn’t he do it two years ago? Maybe because anyone could see that he had lost a step last year?

Then you want to give him credit for putting together our defense? He has nothing to do with our defense. Tomlinson and Frazier have handled that without much input from Chili and all the marquee players (Williams Wall, EJ, Winfield, and even Sharper) were in place when he got here.

I didn’t know if Tice had the pedigree to be a head coach in the NFL, and he made some mistakes, but the fact is he took a team with A LOT less talent than the Vikings had last year, and ZERO support from ownership, to a 9-7 record. When the best Chili has done is 10-6 after adding the NFLs best running back, D-end, L-guard to the mix—not to mention a much better ownership situation. And if you ask me Adrian Peterson by himself is worth more than a single win.

The only thing I can give Childress credit for is his ability to hire D-coordinators, and script the first 10 plays of a game, beyond that I haven’t seen anything above mediocrity from him and a whole lot of ego and arrogance.

Minnesota fans are dumb

Bandwagons and homers, that’s all most Minnesota sports fans are…

Stay classy Wu. Stay classy.

Except he took a pay cut to stay on the team. Most guys would not do that. He let the Vikings cut his salary in half, and then a few days later, “Oh yeah, by the way, we’re cutting you. Thanks for taking the pay cut and all, but you’re no longer needed here, even though you showed a huge amount of loyalty by staying with the team for one more year despite losing your job to a rookie.”

Add Billy McMullen to the list of greatness.