Childress and Vikings organization excellent in advanced scouting and preperation of opponants (from a Packer fan)

In a post 2 days ago I offered a few thoughts on the Vikings going into the 2010 season.  This post, I want to focus on an issue that I sometimes think gets overlooked: Advanced Scouting (of the opposition).  On a somewhat related note, I have a childhood friend who is now an assistant coach with an NBA team.  He worked his way up to that position by toiling away for years as the teams video editor and then advanced scout (person who scouts an upcoming opponant).  It is very interesting to hear his stories of others in his profession.  Like all sports  (and all jobs actually), there are people who are just good at what they do and then there are those who aren't very good.  My friend made his reputation on advanced scouting and studying opponants tendencies. But he said his problem early on, was that he wasn't an effective communicator.  So eventhough, he would spend hours and hours on a game report, it sometimes wasn't implemented as well as it could have been because of communication.  People learn differently, and the job of a coach is to prepare players for situations where their instincts take over influenced by succesful preperation whether in the film room or practice field.

This leads me to Brad Childress and The Vikings.  Childress has been degraded by numerous people for his apparant poor coaching.  This may or may not be true, but it is not the subject for this post.  Besides focusing on his play-calling or his motivating techniques (inlcuding fashion) or his trips to the airport, I want to focus on the preperation he has the Vikings undertake for upcoming opponants. Again, for those who are unaware, but I am a die-hard Green Bay fan who strives (imperfectly) to be somewhat objective.  As I noted in my previous post, I have tremendous respect for the Vikings organization as they have provided us with the premier rivalry in the NFL for the past almost 20 years.  When I was reviewing the comments on my last post and thinking about the upcoming season, I realize that I (and probally many other fans) often over-look some of the things that make winning essential.  I feel Childress and the Vikings coaching staff does an excellent job (maybe the best) in getting their players prepared for the upcoming opponant and scouting the opposition.  Rightfully alot of credit goes to Brett Favre for the success of last year. I have watched Favre since 1992 and truely believe that last year was far and away his best and most efficent year.  Made the big plays and more importantly, didn't have the turnovers. But are we to think Favre at the age 40 suddenly learned to stop ebing such a risk taker? And are we to give the offensive staff barely any credit?  Anyone who has ever watched favre, recognizes he was a different player last year.  He has always been great, but he played on a whole other level (much to my chagrin btw). Obvioulsy it would be disingenious to discount motivation as a factor for his success.  He definately wanted and succeded in getting revenge on Green Bay.  But I really feel Childress and his staff implemented and executed a near flawless game-plan.

    - In the first game he completed 77% of his passes, simply astounding.  Now we all realize now how Green bay could be exploited against a top flight QB.  But we didn't know then, nor did Green Bay's first 3 opponants.  Childress came into that game with a plan on how pick apart the vulnurable points and Favre executed that to perfection.  It wasnt about big plays or fluke plays.  It was about a steady, methodical whoopin. And from my perspective, it wasn't just Green Bay but almost every important game in 2010.  From this outside perspective it really seemed like Childress and his staff had great game plans and the players really bought into it.  I think of both playoff games as an example.  Dallas was another whoopin that they didnt see coming.  The Orleans game was just bad luck with turnovers or that game might not have been close.  So while Childress get his fair share of criticism (fair or unfar), i want to see what you guys think of my supposition that the Vikings offenisve staff is one of the better ones at creating a game plan and exploting other teams weaknesses.