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Brad Childress Says He Left Vikings “In A Lot Better Shape”

To put it mildly, this hasn’t been the Minnesota Vikings‘ year. They won their last game against the Redskins, but they’re 4-7 in a year they were planning for a run at the Super Bowl, and they fired coach Brad Childress due to a combination of the poor record and players hating him. But in a recent interview, Childress still sounded proud of his overall body of work.

Speaking to the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Childress had the following to say:

“I don’t know if [the firing is] shocking. All you have to do is look around the league to know this happens. I didn’t do everything perfectly, but I felt I coached my way. I left that job in a lot better shape than we were [in 2006].”

One has to wonder if Vikings fans will quite agree with that sentiment. Yes, Childress’ teams won 10+ games and made the playoffs twice, while his predecessor Mike Tice never won 10 and made the playoffs just once in four seasons.

But Tice’s last team went 9-7, while Childress’ last squad was 3-7 at the time of his firing – not to mention has a 41-year-old quarterback who says he’ll retire at the end of the year, leaving the team in flux at the most important position on the field. (And even if he returns, that leaves them with a 42-year-old QB in 2011.)

Childress surely believes in his heart of hearts that he left the Vikings in better shape than he found them. Surely, he worked hard. We weren’t around the Vikings at the time of his hiring, so we can’t speak to how things were back then – maybe awful. But they’re certainly not in good shape now, and hearing the fired coach who presided over most of a miserably messy season reflect positively on his own performance will probably not sit all that well with most Vikings fans.

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