Brad Childress called off Wednesday afternoon’s practice, bringing training camp 2009 to an end. The team will leave for Indianapolis on Thursday and begin the exhibition season Friday night against the Colts.
The Vikings survived camp more-or-less intact health wise. The biggest blemish was, of course, Tarvaris Jackson‘s knee injury, which caused him to miss a couple of days, but evidently didn’t cause him to fall behind Sage Rosenfels on the depth chart. And then there was Brian Robison‘s injury which forced him to lose a week and possibly a chance to usurp Ray Edwards as the starting left end.
There were some small dings too: Steve Hutchinson, Percy Harvin, John Sullivan. Nothing that should carry over into the season though. Nothing catastrophic. Let’s hope it stays that way through preseason, which is always a time of more nervousness than amusement (unless you’re the type who derives great entertainment from watching third-stringers).
The biggest controversy was of course Bobby Wade‘s mis-statement (the kindest word I can think to use) about the QB competition. Mr. Wade seemed to say in an interview that Tarvaris Jackson had been handed the starting job, despite Chilly’s statements to the contrary. Wade was forced to clean that up by explaining that he never meant to say what he said. For a good 24 hours, though, it seemed like the Vikings were involved in some kind of shady cover-up, and that Mr. Wade had inadvertently spilled the beans.
This kerfuffle, like all training camp stories, will quickly fade from memory. Soon the preaseason will start, and we’ll have a whole new bunch of stuff to fret about. And then the season itself will begin, and all the stuff we sweated in the preseason will become insignificant too. It is the way of all things.