Childress on Favre: "It's a decent relationship"
Much has been made of Brett Favre's occasionally strained relationship with Vikings head coach Brad Childress, and the coach seems willing to admit that he isn't exactly buddy-buddy with the 40-year-old quarterback.
"It's a decent relationship," Childress told former Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin on his radio talk show on WQAM in Miami, courtesy of sportsradiointerviews.com. “It is certainly a player-coach relationship ... I have got a greater appreciation for who he is and I have got a greater appreciation for how he works during the season at his craft. It is not just a guy that happens to be a tremendously skilled guy. He spends time at what he is doing.”
Childress on what he told quarterbacks Tarvaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels once he knew Favre was coming back: "You did see how hard [Jackson] worked to put himself into position. He had by all regards a good two weeks of training camp and Sage played very well the other night against St. Louis, Tarvaris only took like 8 snaps. But I don’t have a crystal ball and neither does he. This is such a fluid environment."
On how he decided to send three veteran players to Mississippi to convince Favre to come back:
"Instincts are huge and my best sense was that was what it was going to take. Brett was a huge part of our success last year, we wanted them back and those guys were tired of texting or talking. Any kind of relationship there is a lot more done at the table or eyeball to eyeball, and that is what I felt it would take. You might say, Geez you violated something. Should you have to do that? No, that is what it took, by any means necessary. I don’t know if there are any bylaws and I said yesterday, when the train varies you have got to go with the train. We have got a great owner and he said, is that what we need to do? That is what we needed to do and those three guys were probably the tightest with him. They didn’t balk at all, they were game on.”
On recalling a line that Bill Parcells once told him about being a head coach:
"Bill Parcells probably had the greatest line for me a couple of years before I got this job. At the Combine I was walking with him and he said, ‘You know you are going to get your chance soon?’ And I said, you think so? He said, ‘Yeah you are going to get your chance. Remember this, it ain’t all that it is F’n cracked up to be.’ And I said, what? He said, ‘You heard me and don’t forget who told you that,’ So let’s fast-forward 2 years later. I am walking out to the 50-yard line 4th preseason game of the season, Bill was standing there and I get within about 10 yards of him and he says, ‘Huh? What did I tell you?’ He was going through the Terrell Owens deal riding the bicycle, Terry Glenn was there then. I had just let Daunte Culpepper go 3 weeks after I got there. There is no manual for it, I will say that to you. It is the only business in the world where you get better with the X’s and O’s and then when you jump into this seat it isn’t as much about that as much as it is about relationships with people and communicating with people.”
