Brad Childress once again opens mouth, inserts foot
Brad Childress has had a long history of being seemingly obsessed with Bill Belichick. Perhaps it is not Belichick, but the New England Patriots as a whole that he is still infatuated with, nine months after being fired as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.
In a column yesterday on NFL.com, Childress said Randy Moss "walked in the locker room and vomited on it".
To me that says that Childress is blaming Moss for his getting fired.
First of all, as head coach of a team it is part of his job to keep control of the locker room, whether it is pulling the player aside privately, dressing him down in front of the rest of the team, doing so publicly through the media, or having veteran leadership within the locker room take care of a player who is stepping out of line. Childress failed to take care of the situation by any one of those methods, so therefore he has nobody to blame but himself.
Aside from that Childress' decision to roll the dice with an aging Brett Favre, his lack of creativity in play calling and game planning, and most importantly, his lack of communication - he cut Moss without informing Viking owner Zygi Wolf. You might get away with those things when you're winning, but those actions combined with a 31-3 loss to a division rival, dropping your record to 3-7 after going to the conference championship and being a Vegas favorite to go to the super bowl is yes, going to get you fired.
Michael Hurley at NESN summed it up very well:
"Coaching is what I do."-- Brad Childress to NFL.com. Childress is currently not coaching. Meanwhile, Moss will have his Hall of Fame credentials discussed.
This of course is not the first time Childress has had something to say about a current or former Patriot. In 2007 Childress told the media that Belichick had allegedly asked him to not put a waiver claim on a Patriot player, but he did so anyways and Belichick was upset by that. In 2009 Childress was bragging about how he supposedly stole Percy Harvin from Belichick and the Pats in that draft. And then just last year Childress decided that it was appropriate for him to dredge up spygate, calling him one of the all-time great sign stealers in the days leading up to their game against the Patriots - which the Pats won 28-18, Brett Favre was knocked out, and it was pretty much the beginning of the end for Childress' tenure in Minnesota.
Apparently Childress' never learned the old saying of 'if you don't have something nice to say, say nothing at all'. And apparently he never grasped the concept think before you speak either.
