Randy Moss Fiasco Evidence That Brad Childress, Vikings Are Now Laughingstock of NFL

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Nov 1, 2010

Randy Moss Fiasco Evidence That Brad Childress, Vikings Are Now Laughingstock of NFL No matter how the Randy Moss mess gets sorted out, one thing is probably fairly certain — Vikings head coach Brad Childress is probably going to be out of a job sooner rather than later.

Childress, who undoubtedly had a historically bad case of the Mondays with the Moss mess on Monday, has finally hit rock bottom as the head coach of the Vikings. He's not going down alone. He's bringing the entire organization with him, an organization that has become the NFL's laughingstock.

It won't matter how things get sorted out. Childress has likely lost his team, a group that reportedly became "frustrated' by the way the Moss situation was handled. And while the ordeal will likely end up being the final straw, this, like a game-ending Brett Favre interception when it matters most, is something we should have seen coming a while ago.

Speaking of Favre, he's probably a good place to start. Childress put his entire job security into the Favre basket two summers ago, when he practically begged Favre to come quarterback the Vikes.

By giving Favre everything he wanted, in both money and attention, Childress and the Vikings made it clear, that at the end of the day, directly or not, it would be Favre calling the shots.

And for a season, it went swimmingly. The Vikings were a tremendous team last season, up until, of course, Favre threw his inevitable game-ending interception in the NFC Championship.

Sure, it stung, but the Vikings had reason to be hopeful about the future. They had come close, and they weren't far off from being a championship contender. Favre, up until the season-ending pick, had found the fountain of youth and was playing lights out, arguably the best he's ever played in his Hall of Fame career.

But a storied career had started to take its toll on the then 40-year-old. He was suffering from a nagging ankle injury and his arm was finally starting to feel the effects of throwing tens of thousands of passes and making almost 300 consecutive starts.

The smart money was for Favre to ride off into the sunset and for the Vikings to let them do that. In an act of desperation, though, Childress and the Vikings made it their mission to get Favre back. Childress went even as far as to send his captains to Mississippi to talk Favre into coming back.

He came back, alright. He came back and brought with him the injuries, the controversy and the increasingly negative attention. Favre started the year with a flurry of turnovers, something that got even worse when reports of possible sexual harrassment of a Jets employee in Favre's brief time in New York came out.

It was, quite simply, a total mess.

But Childress, needing something to save his job, had a plan. He took, what had amounted to one man's trash — Moss — and tried to turn it into the treasure that would turn the Minnesota season around and, in effect, save Chilly's job. He lost control long ago, but if this worked out, it would have looked shrewd, not desperate.

The thing about desperate moves, though, is they can often blow up in your face. Like bringing Favre back blew up, so did bringing Moss back, something that was capped by the receiver's postgame comments on Sunday.

On Monday, Childress reportedly let Moss go. It reeks of an attempt to finally gain back some control and power back by a guy who, by now, is pretty much a lame-duck head coach.

It's a modest attempt, but it's one that could have and should have come a year, maybe even two years earlier. By now, it's way too late. Childress has lost his team. Soon, he'll lose his job.

It doesn't matter how this dilemma surrounding Randy Moss plays out. For the Vikings to turn things around, they'll have no choice but to let him go. Until the Vikings do so, there's something they better get used to hearing.

"Hey, did you hear the one about the Vikings…?"

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