Brad Childress Gives Farewell Talk

Brad Childress gave his farewell address to the media today. No, he’s not going anywhere – I just mean he was saying goodbye to the media cause the season is over. I’m sure Brad won’t miss any of those guys, and I don’t think too many of them are going to miss having to sit through his tedious press conferences either.

The main topic of concern was Tarvaris Jackson and his future with the team. Childress continues to say basically what he’s said all along – that it’s an on-going process of evaluation. The exact Chilly quote:

"I thought he continued to make progress, as we went through, and hopefully that’s a things to come picture of what you saw there in the last five minutes, playing wide open and cutting loose with it and making plays with his arm and his feet."

Childress is referring of course to the end of the Broncos game when Tarvaris started making plays after sucking the whole game, and brought the Vikes back to tie it before fumbling it away in overtime. Sort of amusing that Childress would praise T-Jack for playing wide-open after seeming to deliberately rein him in most of the season. Maybe we’ve misread Chilly’s attitude toward gunslingerism. In which case Rex Grossman might be a viable possibility as a QB acquisition this off-season.

No, I’m joking about Grossman. God…anything but that.

Back to Childress…the coach indicated by certain of his remarks that the Vikes will be in the market for some kind of quarterbacking help this off-season. Chilly said:

"Good football players are what we’re all about, and I haven’t even started to assess the draft or free agency yet, and see what’s out there.  So this is a fluid situation."

And speaking of fluidity…there’s no problem whatsoever with the money flow coming through the organization via Zygi Wilf. The owner has told Childress to spend as much as he thinks he needs on players. The Vikings remain well under the cap, and have shown a willingness to spend big if the right guy comes up (e.g., Steve Hutchinson). Unfortunately, the free agent class this off-season is weak to pitiful. The best options would be in the trade market, but of course that would mean giving up valuable draft picks.

Childress also spoke today about players who will need surgery in the off-season. That list includes Antoine Winfield, Pat Williams, Bobby Wade, Jayme Mitchell and Bryant McKinnie. No surprises.

Oh, and one last order of business…Troy Williamson‘s future with the team. On that Childress said:

"One thing I have to say about Troy is, Troy worked extremely hard this offseason to try to better himself. He tried different things. We tried different things to improve. He’s still under contract to the Minnesota Vikings, and he’s a part of those ongoing discussions that we’ll have next week when we talk about the receiver position."

Troy Williamson’s chances of still being a Viking come next season: zip, zero, zilch.