Coach and quarterback are targets for blogs and e-mails

There are bull's-eyes all over the Twin Cities sports scene.

We now have Target Center and Target Field tied together on the West Side of downtown Minneapolis. And on Sunday afternoons, we have Target Coach and Target Quarterback inspiring the paranoia of 60,000 people gathered on downtown's East Side.

The masses still were in an uproar Monday, 24 hours after the Vikings fell to 0-2 with an old-fashioned, come-from-ahead 18-15 loss to the Indianapolis Colts.

Quarterback Tarvaris Jackson heard the first substantial boos of his young career Sunday. And Brad Childress was holding firm at 6 percent approval in Monday's weekly fans rating of NFL coaches on espn.com.

Childress held his day-after news conference and was asked about the perception that he has tied himself stubbornly to Jackson at quarterback rather than considering other options.

He asked in return if this perception was backed by the results of a "Gallup Poll."

The reporter said it was more a case of the quiet words of e-mailers reacting to Sunday's defeat.

And then the coach said that Jackson's presence as the Vikings' starting quarterback in 2007 and the start of this season has been the result of ongoing evaluation.

He claimed his choice of a quarterback is based strictly on what gives his team the best chance to win -- and thus not some death-wish devotion to Jackson that most of Vikingsland seems to suspect.

The Purple traded up in the second round of the 2006 draft to get Jackson. Childress followed with a quote that still haunts him: that the prospect from Division I-AA Alabama State was a "piece of clay" that he could mold into an NFL quarterback.

It should be remembered that Childress didn't push a Jackson agenda in 2006. The new coach believed he was inheriting a veteran of starting quality in Brad Johnson. And he also brought in Brooks Bollinger as a backup, so Jackson could sit and learn.

Publicly, Childress did not commit to Jackson out of the chute last season -- telling Bollinger he would have a chance to compete with Jackson in training camp to be the starter.

So, if you watched either Holcomb or Bollinger last season, it's hard to say that Childress wasn't giving his team its best chance to win by starting Jackson.

That brings us to this offseason. The Vikings offered a third-round pick to Houston for Sage Rosenfels, a No. 2 quarterback of reasonable talent. The Texans wanted a second-rounder and the Vikings refused.

Was this intractability the fault of Childress -- or was it personnel boss Rick Spielman thinking his genius with collegians was too valuable to surrender a second-rounder to obtain viable competition for Jackson?

Whatever, the Vikings remained unsteady enough in their commitment to Jackson that Childress and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell did whisper sweet nothings into Brett Favre's cell phone as he was trying to arrange his comeback.

Commissioner Roger Goodell exonerated the Vikings against Green Bay's tampering claim -- which wasn't a big deal after Favre finally agreed to go to the New York Jets.

Asked if he was worried that it now could be fashionable inside the Dome to boo his quarterback, Childress said:

"Usually, [it's] the same thing with a coach. It's fashionable. But you have to be able to have thick skin. That's what goes with that quarterback position.

"If they feel like you scuffed one or didn't do something right, you're going to get those boos. ... I have my ideas about how you stem it.

"Everybody plays better."

The media session soon ended. As Childress walked past an old sportswriter, he offered this sentence of advice: