Vikings, Culpepper couldn’t work out problems

Daunte Culpepper called Wednesday the "halftime of my career." Vikings owner Zygi Wilf had a different term for it.

"Maybe it was a mid-football life crisis," Wilf said of a 21/2-month drama that ended with the Vikings' decision to trade Culpepper to Miami for a second-round draft choice. In an interview, Wilf said he was "clearly disappointed" to see Culpepper leave but said the team's leadership exhausted every avenue to reconcile its relationship with him.

Ultimately, Wilf said, the Vikings determined Culpepper did not want to play for them. Although Culpepper told ESPN that he never understood his long-term status with the franchise, Wilf said "Minnesota didn't seem to be in his plans."

"We thought we could find a way in which we could get Daunte to work with us," Wilf said, "and to get into the plan that we were trying to put together for our future. With everything he had gone through this past year, the injury and the incidents and everything else, getting rid of his agent, it just seemed to me that in his mind he wanted to make a change in his life and in his career."

Wilf continued: "... We tried everything we could do to accommodate but it didn't seem like he was interested in staying a Viking."

Culpepper spent Wednesday morning at the Dolphins training facility in Davie, Fla., meeting with coaches while also restructuring his contract for cap purposes. ESPN reported that his compensation will remain $8 million for 2006, but that it would come in the form of a $7 million signing bonus and a $1 million base salary.

Culpepper did not address Miami reporters, and coach Nick Saban would not provide an update on Culpepper's surgically repaired right knee. But Culpepper told ESPN that he planned to start the Dolphins' season-opening game and thanked the Vikings for giving him a "fresh start."

"I kind of feel like it's halftime of my career right now," he said. "Everybody knows that the team that makes the best adjustments at halftime usually wins the game. ... [This experience] really opens your eyes up -- when you feel like you want to do the best you can and try the best you can, but you feel like it wasn't wanted, that it didn't matter.

"It was tough. But instead of getting bitter, I kind of used it as motivation and I got better. A saying that I heard a long time ago is that things that don't kill you make you better."

Although the Vikings have been discussing trade possibilities since the middle of last month, Culpepper said he planned to play for the team until it sent him an e-mail March 6 -- a response to his request for "clarity" about his status.

"I wanted to know how they saw me," he said. "I never got the clarity I was looking for. Obviously, that was a message in itself. I had to act accordingly."

Only then, Culpepper said, did he seek his departure. Although Vikings coach Brad Childress and the rest of the team's leadership denied interview requests Wednesday, Wilf said the Vikings had long ago sensed Culpepper's true intent.

"I talked to him several weeks ago," Wilf said. "Since that point in time, it didn't seem like he was willing to find a way to work things out. He didn't want to come up [from his Florida home] to rehabilitate, and he did not want to work with the coaching staff. It seemed like we had two alternatives. We could have paid him the [$6 million bonus he was due March 24] like I intended to, and tried to work with him. But he was making every effort to find a way to leave. We did our best."

Wilf said Culpepper never provided the team a reason for his discontent or why he was concerned about his status.

"You've got to ask him," Wilf said. "I just think that the combination of the injury and ... I don't know, a career crisis. He wanted a change. Maybe it's the attitude that had fallen upon him because of the boat incident. All of those different matters probably played into his decision not to try to find a way to work things out."