Both T-Jack and Rosenfels were available to the media on Thursday, and quite understandably, both expressed frustration with the continuation of the Brett Favre rumors. Let's start with T-Jack -- here's what he told the media:
"It comes with the territory. I won’t lie and say it don’t bother me. But I kind of got used to it. If you had to hear it year in and year out, all the time, eventually you’re going to be tired of it. But I guess it just comes with being the quarterback for the Vikings right now. It is what it is."
"You always want to know. Like any situation you’re in, you want to know. But I guess it’s not their job to tell me."
It's gotta be suffocating, doesn't it? True, it's certainly debatable if T-Jack's done enough on the field to legitimately take the sudden Favre speculation as a personal "insult," but look, someone is finally going outside the party-line boundaries and saying what he thinks about this stuff. Needless to say, that's been lacking.
I find the final sentence there to be pretty interesting -- "it’s not their job to tell me." Should it be their job? I get the impression that T-Jack and Rosenfels are completely out of the loop and aren't being told anything. It's understandable from the team's perspective to keep these internal matters isolated to the front office and out of the locker room, and no one's arguing that T-Jack and Rosenfels aren't treating this with anything but the utmost professionalism as it is, but the communication gap between them and the team is a somewhat troubling.
As honest as T-Jack was with his "it just comes with being the quarterback for the Vikings right now" line, Sage was more politically correct with his public comments after Thursday's practice:
"Uncertainty is never a good thing. But again I can’t control what the head coach does or the GM does. They’re going to make decisions. One day when I’m a head coach or I’m a GM I’ll be making decisions. But right now I’m just a quarterback. My job is to get the ball in the hands of the receivers and the running backs and tight ends."
In an interview with KARE 11 News last night, he apparently said something to the effect of, 'I uprooted my family to come to Minnesota' and 'I would be disappointed if Brett Favre became a Viking' (if anyone saw the interview and has any corrections/additions, feel free to chime in). This brings up an interesting question -- do you feel bad for Rosenfels that he's on the verge of having a chance to start yanked from him within a matter of months?
It's difficult for me to feel bad for him, given the fact that the decision to give Favre a look is a business one and hey, Sage is obviously being paid quite well. But he did indeed come to Minnesota with the notion that he'd have an above-average chance to start, something which wasn't going to happen in Houston.
Childress clearly doesn't feel he needs to keep Rosenfels or T-Jack up to speed on the Favre saga:
Those guys play football, and I coach football and look at personnel, as I mentioned before. So they would be out of their lane and I would be out of my lane in sharing any of our business, whether it be surgery, injury, talking about other players. We just don’t do that. It is more of just a coaching relationship. So, as I mentioned yesterday, I could go non-stop standing up here and never get anything done, but I have to do this.
Well, this doesn't appear to be an issue Chilly's spent too much time agonizing over, but I don't think it's quite as clear-cut as he's suggesting. I recently brought up Marcus Robinson's gripe when he left the team about Chilly's communication issues with the locker room -- I brought it up as an example of a way Chilly has improved in the last season or two and something that wouldn't be an issue at this point, but that could have been premature.
No question about it: This is the old Brad Childress we're seeing. The Brad Childress that remains distant from the locker room and reluctant to communicate. It is, as he says, just a coaching relationship, but the gap between him and two quarterbacks that may be starting for him this season is unsettling, to a certain degree.