MINNEAPOLIS -- Contrary to what some Vikings fans have
contended, Brad Childress does indeed have a brain, and he uses it
to think quite a bit.
Minnesota's 46-year-old professional football franchise has long
been this frozen region's most popular sports team, and passionate
opinions from the public about the head coach have flowed freely
from that.
So by losing 16 of his first 27 games, while overseeing an
offense that was largely boring at best and inept at its worst,
Childress has not exactly won over the purple-clad crowd.
His self-described flat-line personality, plus media portrayals
of a front office and coaching staff that had become much-less open
than the previous regimes, contributed to a wide perception that he
was too rigid and aloof.
Well, the message boards are still stocked with "Fire Childress
now!" manifestos, but this 51-year-old former psychology major has
stuck to his beliefs and found himself in much better standing as
Monday night's game against Chicago approached.
The Vikings (7-6) are in control of the NFC's final playoff spot
after four straight well-rounded victories, quite a contrast from
one month ago when they were whipped by rival Green Bay and it
looked like Childress could lose control of his team.
"There's always more buy-in when you're winning," Childress
said. "I think they all understand that there's a method to the
madness. It's not oppressive. They understand where we're trying to
go. It is a generation why: 'Why are we doing this?'
"We're not coaching to say, 'Hey, we're going to run through a
wall four times a day.' How come? So you always explain it and say,
'Here's what we're going to do.' I rely on the leadership to be
able to be strong enough to say, 'Hey coach, what about this?"
Childress has often remarked this season, even while the Vikings
were 2-5 and 3-6, that the makeup and chemistry of the team is
good. Though he's unlikely to have a buddy-buddy relationship with
anyone in the locker room, the two sides have gotten to know each
other more and now have a stronger trust. Why, might the players
have warmed up to the boss?
"Warm might be a little strong," Childress said, smiling.
Not to hear some of them talk about it.
"It's really getting better," wide receiver Bobby Wade said.
"That's probably one of the hardest things as a head coach to do,
is to still find yourself in position where everybody's going to
respect you if you've got to discipline somebody or something like
that."
When wide receiver Troy Williamson spent extra time with family
in South Carolina following his grandmother's death, the team cited
policy and withheld his paycheck from the Nov. 4 game against San
Diego. That didn't sit well in the locker room, and the
eight-player veteran leadership committee chided the decision in
their regular meeting with Childress.
Though they lost to the Packers 34-0 that Sunday, it was during
that week, by most accounts, when the players came closer together
in standing up for their teammate and the coach won points with his
willingness to change his mind.
"It's not important to be right, but to get it right,"
Childress said then.
After playing briefly at Illinois, where he later coached,
Childress graduated from Eastern Illinois with a bachelor's degree
in psychology. Though he chose football over further study, he has
always been fascinated by the human mind and has used his knowledge
of personality traits and types to try to lead his team and work
with players in effective ways. For the record, Childress himself
is an I-S-T-J on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test as an
introverted sensor, thinker and judger.
"I always thought about shaving my head, growing a beard and
having somebody lay on the couch, and saying, 'Tell me about your
mother," Childress said in an interview in his office last week.
Positive self-talk is one of his pet concepts, something he
preached often earlier in the season while the Vikings were
bottoming out.
"You've got certain things that you believe in, and the biggest
thing is that you get the other guys to believe in that,"
Childress said. "Then you're going to have to minister to them
when they're up and down, and you're dealing with 53 completely
different personalities that you're trying to shape all into one.
"Believe me, I wish I was more in-depth with those guys."
Bears coach Lovie Smith is in a different spot in his fourth
season. After compiling a 24-8 record over the last two years and
taking his team to the Super Bowl last season, Smith is trying to
squeeze a solid finish out of an injury-depleted squad that has
fallen to 5-8 and is an ultra-long shot for the playoffs.
"It's been tough ... but that's how life is," he said.
"Sometimes you have a great play call and a team blitzes and
throws you out of it a little bit. You just have to deal with
things as they come."