Minnesota Vikings: Troy Williamson still hates Brad Childress

Notorious Minnesota Vikings draft bust Troy Williamson has cleared the air about a number of things, including his relationship with Brad Childress.

During his time as Minnesota Vikings head coach, Brad Childress was widely perceived as a guy who may have known a lot about football but didn’t know squat about dealing with human beings.

That perception was fed by multiple cases of apparent tone-deafness including a notorious incident where Childress fined wide receiver Troy Williamson for being late getting back to the team after attending his grandmother’s funeral.

“Grandmagate” as I have decided to dub the affair all these years later always remained somewhat shrouded in mystery, but now thanks to Troy Williamson himself, we have more details about what really went down. And it turns out Brad Childress was more of a villain than we ever knew.

In a chat with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Williamson spoke about the incident with Childress, his teammates’ reaction to the incident and how the whole thing affected his relationship with the coach he later said he wanted to fight:

"“I never really got a true apology for that. He went back and gave me the game check back — which I donated to charity to show it wasn’t even about the money — but that was because the veterans like Antoine Winfield and Bryant McKinnie went back at it. They know the importance of family and other things bigger than football. So that was the time that I lost all respect (for Childress). After that it was tough playing for him, and I was kind of glad I got to leave Minnesota and get out from under him.”"

The Vikings later traded Williamson to the Jaguars for a sixth-round pick. Childress went on to lead the Vikings to a pair of playoff appearances only to be fired himself in the middle of 2010.

For those of us who experienced the Childress years in Minnesota, these nuggets of info from Williamson are really fascinating. We always suspected that Childress wasn’t respected by players but to hear from a former Viking just how deeply Chilly was resented is quite eye-opening.

Ultimately, Childress wasn’t done in by his lack of football knowledge, he was derailed by his inability to manage people. On some level Childress just didn’t get it. Hearing Williamson’s story should make Viking fans even more grateful for Mike Zimmer, a guy who clearly does get it when it comes to the finer points of managing people.

Childress always fancied himself a bit of a philosopher/psychologist but it’s clear now that the weird musings he liked to share in interviews and press conferences were mostly piffle and in truth he had no clue what he was doing when it came to handling the men he was supposed to be leading.

That being said, clearly Brad Childress should not be blamed for Troy Williamson’s ultimate failure as a player. As Williamson himself says in the Star-Tribune piece, he just didn’t have what it took mentally to make it in the NFL. The Williamson situation stands as a great example of why drafting and developing are so darn tricky.