With the firing of Josh McDaniels and Brad Childress behind us, I wondered if they were similar situations.  In some ways, they were not.  Brad Childress was in his 5th year while McDaniels was only in his 2nd year.  The Vikings had won a playoff game (and lost two others) during his tenure while McDaniels had not coached a playoff game in Denver (but perhaps he could have given 4+ years to do so).  Childress brought in more yes men than McDaniels, and Childress had more premium free agents and better defensive players on the roster.

I think there are more similarities, though.  Both the 2009 Broncos (6-0) and 2006 Vikings (4-2) started out well only to finish 2-8 the rest of the way.  Both coaches chased away franchise QBs, but that worked out better for the Broncos as Kyle Orton posted about the same rating as Cutler had the previous year and the Broncos received three premium draft picks.  Of course, Culpepper was injured at the time and was never the same, but the Vikings' QBs did not perform better than Daunte did in worse situations (and the reward of the trade was a 2nd round pick used on the Ryan Cook Experiment).  Both coaches seemed to have great difficulty getting along with star receivers.  Both coaches drafted a raw project QB in an attempt to mold them into their respective guys, but McDaniels had the sense to bring in a quality starter and stick with him as his performance was consistently better than expected.  Both coaches won only 3 games before being fired this year.

So, the real questions are whether either coach or both coaches were fired prematurely or on time or too late (poll) and whether we want McDaniels to be a serious candidate for the Vikes' HC position (discuss in comments)?