In what is, at least as far as I know, Brad Childress' first interview about the 2010 season, he gives us quite the graphic picture of how he viewed the trade (and subsequent release) of WR Randy Moss:
"We had good guys, by and large," Childress said, "(but Moss) walked in the locker room and vomited on it."
In the words of the iconic sportscaster Dick Enberg, Oh, my!
Not a lot of us want to really walk down the five alarm fire that the 2010 season turned out to be, but this turned out to be, in many ways, the defining moment of a season gone horribly awry. When the Vikes made the move, it pumped life into the team, and, but for a brief moment, returned hope to fans that thought the season could now be saved.
Yeah, the exact opposite pretty much happened. Moss stuck around for around a month, and Childreess (seemingly) inexplicably released him. It encapsulated, at least to a lot of us, Brad Childress: an autocratic guy that didn't know how to handle the talent around him, and when that talent didn't produce like he thought, or if they tried to buck his authority, they were gone.
It really wasn't that simple, though, at least where Moss was concerned.
According to Childress, Moss was elated to bereturning to his NFL roots:
"He called me and said, 'I can't wait, I can't wait. I feel like I'm coming home again,' " Childress recalled.
But when Moss berated and humiliated a local caterer, Childress made the decision to release him...only he didn't tell anyone. In retrospect, yeah, that might have been a good idea.
The Vikings decided to fire Childress 10 games into the season for many reasons. Their 3-7 record, for one. Their embarrassing 31-3 home loss to the Green Bay Packers in Week 11, another. But perhaps the biggest reason was Childress' odd jettisoning of Randy Moss -- without telling owner Zygi Wilf first -- just four weeks after the team traded for the receiver.
"I should have gone up the chain," Childress now admits.
This seems to confirm, at least to me, that Childress was close to getting canned right after he released Moss. Remember when, I think it was Florio (not sure on that) reported that the delay in Moss showing up on the waiver wire was because the Vikings were trying to reconsider the move, and Wilf was contemplating firing Chilly instead?
I'm not really sure what to make of this story. Part of me wants to go all 'pot calling the kettle black', as Chilly really didn't go out of his way to engender a great working relationship with the players, part of me still wants to ask him what the hell he was thinking releasing Moss without letting anyone else know about it, and part of me thinks he is trying to pass the blame off on him getting fired because of Moss being a jackass and Favre being terrible, and it really had nothing to do with him.
Looking back, I'm not sure much could have been done to prevent the trainwreck that was 2010. Favre really aged between 2009 and 2010, the offensive line play was terrible, and the defense regressed substantially.
But the Moss trade and subsequent release was the moment the Vikings season went from smoldering brush fire to blazing inferno, and I thought that Childress' perspective on the whole episode was interesting, if nothing else.
Now, let's get back to talking about who the third string DT should be!!