Judd and Chip, when they aren't having odes written in their honor, have been UPDATING YOU YEAR-ROUND ON ALL THINGS PURPLE. Seriously, what an exhilarating, crazy, frustrating, exhausting beat.
We're merely here to piggyback on their good work. And for your mid-day talker, we refer to this nugget from Judd's story today on Zygi Wilf, who spent Wednesday and Thursday at Winter Park.
Wilf is believed to have seen just how volatile Moss could be. After catching only one pass for 8 yards in the Vikings' 28-18 loss to the New England Patriots, Moss walked into the visitors' locker room where Wilf and other executives stood. According to an NFL source familiar with what transpired, Moss told the Vikings owner in no uncertain terms that Childress wasn't a good coach and should be fired.
So we have Moss' on-field loafing (seriously, if you didn't see it against the Patriots, you weren't trying). We have the catering incident. We have the Sunday post-game media ramble. And now we have Moss telling the owner that Childress should be fired. After being here four weeks.
Have the Moss apologists heard enough yet? This one has.
Bringing Moss here seemed like it could be just crazy enough to work at the time. It was exciting. It was a needed shot in the arm after a slow start. But it just ... didn't ... work. Childress probably should have known it wouldn't work, but he was desperate. Quibble over that. Quibble over the entire process of cutting Moss, including not going through Wilf first, which was a bad mistake. Quibble over whether Moss was used properly (but remember that in his final game, 1 grab for 8 yards, the Vikings were playing with a gimpy QB behind an inconsistent line -- a recipe most conducive for the short passes and running game that were often working, not the long ball to Moss).
But big-picture, reality had to trump desperation. The ultimate calculation was that keeping Moss would have been a mistake -- even if getting rid of him meant admitting that getting him in the first place was a mistake.
At this point, we can't argue with that conclusion -- even if that means the part of us that loved not knowing what might happen with Moss from one minute to the next had to hit the waiver wire.
