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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/sports/football/23vikings.html

Vikings Fire Coach After 3-7 Start

Perhaps the first sign that this was going to be an off-kilter season for the Minnesota Vikings came when Coach Brad Childress dispatched three of his players on a private jet to beg Brett Favre to return for one more run at the Super Bowl just one season after the Vikings made it to the National Football Conference championship game.

Favre did return, but the chaos was only beginning. There would be the arrival and stunningly rapid departure of receiver Randy Moss.

And with the season devolving as Favre has struggled with injury — and Childress has struggled to contain growing locker room discontent with his coaching style — the team owner Zygi Wilf finally pulled the plug on a year he hoped would help him secure a new publicly financed stadium.

On Monday, one day after a humiliating blowout loss to the Green Bay Packers, Wilf fired Childress and installed the defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier as the interim coach, the Vikings announced in a brief statement.

The Vikings are 3-7 with no championship hopes remaining, but Frazier still faces a vexing coaching dilemma: whether to bench the ineffective Favre, 41, whose consecutive starts streak that began in 1992 remains intact despite spiraling results. This season he has thrown 10 touchdowns and 17 interceptions, and after the 31-3 loss to the Packers on Sunday he said that he wanted to “re-evaluate” when asked if he would finish the season. Favre is expected to retire after this season — really, this time he says he means it — and Frazier could insert Tarvaris Jackson to determine if the Vikings want to go forward with him as the starter next year, when a full-scale rebuilding is likely.

Childress’s firing has seemed inevitable, even as it came a year after he received a contract extension through 2013. He has sparred with players and harshly criticized Favre. And just a month after acquiring Moss in a trade with the New England Patriots, he released him without first consulting with Wilf.

Wilf was said to be livid with the way Childress handled the Moss situation, but with the Vikings still in contention in the N.F.C. North at the time, he kept him on. On Sunday, though, the Vikings were barely competitive against the Packers, and Childress followed the Cowboys’ Wade Phillips as coaches fired after terrible losses at home to the Packers. Dallas has won two straight under its interim coach, Jason Garrett, and perhaps Wilf took the Cowboys’ change of fortunes as encouragement to make his own switch, especially after fans chanted for Childress’s firing Sunday.

Childress had irrevocably hitched his job to Favre last year, when he personally picked up Favre at the airport and chauffeured him to practice after he decided to join the Vikings late in the summer. Last year Favre summoned the magic of his younger days and led the Vikings to the N.F.C. championship game against the New Orleans Saints.

But an unthinkable snafu in that game — the Vikings were penalized for having too many men in the huddle with 19 seconds left in a tie game, which moved them out of field goal range — might have begun to sour some players and front office people on Childress. Now, Childress has become the second coach to lose his job largely because of Favre’s foibles, after Eric Mangini, who was fired after the 2008 season, Favre’s lone year with the Jets.


Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLC
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eschwerin@rosemontseneca.com
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