Former Vikings head coach Brad Childress considered retirement with his 60th birthday approaching in June. He imagined summers in Minnesota with his grandchildren and winters in Florida, USA Today reported, but his passion for the game delayed these plans.
Childress will share a co-coordinator role for Kansas City this season and Chiefs head coach Andy Reid told USA Today that "Brad should be a head coach again. … He should get another shot."
Childress led the Vikings for four-plus seasons from 2006-2010 and won back-to-back NFC North division championships in 2008 and 2009. The team improved from 6-10 to 8-8 to 10-6 to 12-4, but fell to 3-7 during his fifth season and he was fired in late November 2010. He is only one of three offensive coordinators in the league with a winning record as a head coach.
Childress is 39-35 as a head coach and told USA Today "I stand by my record. … I'm over .500, by four games. Situations happen. [Vikings ownership] did what they had to do."
Childress said he doesn't have any resentment towards Vikings owners Zygi and Mark Wilf, and took ownership of his failure to inform them that he intended to cut wide receiver Randy Moss before actually doing it.
USA Today's Tom Pelissero wrote "Frayed relationships with players were often cited as an issue during Childress' tenure. But he still helped build one of the NFL's most talented rosters and the Vikings rose in the standings, even with a menagerie of underqualified quarterbacks before Favre arrived."
For more on Childress and his role in Kansas City, read USA Today's complete feature.