What was that bang? checks in on Brad Childress

Listen, folks, I haven't been happy with the 2006 Viking season at all either, but let's give Mr. Childress a break. He's a first-time, first-year head coach. And while we should have high expectations for him, the real serious ripping of such a coach shouldn't begin until year 2. I know, he took over a 9-7 team and made them worse. But if they wanted to make a 9-7 team remain a 9-7 team, they could have hired an experienced coach to maintain everything. They hired a new guy to put in a new system. That usually comes with some suckitude in year one. Not always--Saints fans that are actually back living in their homes should be pretty happy (though that's certainly got as much to do with Drew Brees, Deuce McAllister, Reggie Bush, and Marques Colston, four very good offensive players who combined for 4 games in 2005, and the fact that the Saints were vagabonds last year, as it does with their coach. Sean Payton has done a good job, but his work shouldn't be measured by the improvement of the 2006 Saints over the 2005 Saints--it's practically a different team and in a very different situation). But there's going to be a growing period.

It was great reading newspapers to see fans write in that Childress should have been fired midseason. Yep, he's a bum, let's fire him after week 9 and promote Mike Tomlin, who clearly knows what he's doing. Forget the fact that Childress hired Tomlin to put in the defense he wanted. Forget the fact that this is the NFL, and you don't run a team successfully by giving up on the coach halfway through a season.

Maybe Childress is a bum that deserves to be run out of town, maybe Childress is the coach to lead the Vikes back to the Super Bowl (and win the sucker this time). I don't know, and you know what? You don't either. Your high expectations for 2006 were not met. Fine. Go into 2007 with some skepticism and concern--it's probably a better approach. And if the same problems of 2006 continue into 2007, I'll start posting daily about Brad Childress's suckitude. But I'll wait until sometime in 2007.

All, and I mean all, we can hope for in week 17 is for Tarvaris Jackson to be productive. Nothing else matters.