Brad Childress is the second coach in three years to have lost his head-coaching job with a Brett Favre-led team (AP).
In the wake of Brad Childress’ dismissal Monday, there was an interesting nugget buzzing around the Twitterverse:
Childress’ firing marked the second time this season that a head coach had been relieved of his duties after his team was dismantled by the Green Bay Packers (the other being Wade Phillips, formerly of the Cowboys).
This is true enough and will probably age into a trivia-stumper someday, but for me, I couldn’t help but to think about Brett Favre and what has become a truly bizarre career arc. This (what will hopefully be his final) season is eerily similar to his lone year here in New York as quarterback of my beloved Jets, except that rather than presiding over a gut-wrenching collapse, as he did with Gang Green in 2008, the Vikings never got off the ground in 2010.
The final result, though, remains quite similar: A selfish quarterback, fired coach (Eric Mangini was the sacrificial lamb for the Jets) and a lot of disappointed fans.
Childress sealed his own fate, to be sure. To this outsider, he appeared about as sensitive as a toilet seat, to paraphrase one Holden Caulfield, and he and Vikings management went to the well one too many times with a roster loaded with over-the-hill (Pat Williams) and underperforming (Jared Allen) players. Injuries didn’t help, either (Sidney Rice).
But, Favre’s tired act certainly could not have helped Childress. Most pointedly, Favre has once again broken down physically after a long and taxing 2009 that saw the Vikes go all the way to the NFC Championship Game. He’s not even a shadow of the player he was last season, which, admittedly, is a pretty high standard considering how well he played, but he’s been average at best this time around.
To boot, he waffled (but didn’t really waffle) on returning this season, again showing up late to training camp, which can’t sit well with the other lowly peons on the roster — you know, guys like Adrian Peterson. Then, once he was on the team and things weren’t going well, he took some thinly veiled shots at his coach and showed him up on the sidelines.
Whether Childress will get another shot as a head coach remains to be seen. Clearly, he has the chops to win in the NFL, but he has some work to do in managing people. As for Favre, his brilliant 2009 is looking more and more like an outlier in a rather so-so second half of his career, and another coach has lost a power struggle — and his job.
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