After Sunday night’s ugly loss in Charlotte, Vikings quarterback Brett Favre said that he had a “heated discussion” with coach Brad Childress when Childress tried to yank him in the third quarter of a game Minnesota was leading by a point.
On Monday, Childress said there was no “heated discussion.”
Instead, Childress called it a “stream of consciousness.” In other words, Childress is saying that he was generally talking out of an orifice from which sounds other than words typically emerge.
“I’m watching, and I said, ‘Hey, you know what? I’m thinking about taking you out of the game here,” Childress said. “I mean, you’re getting your rear end kicked.’ Through not a lot of fault of his own. . . .
“What I said was, ‘It has nothing to do with how you’re playing. It has to do with what’s happening to you out there. And again, there’s volatility and emotion involved.
“Obviously, he didn’t want anything to do with that, which I certainly appreciate from his standpoint. He wasn’t like, ‘OK, let me get my hat on.’ That wasn’t in his makeup.”
So if Childress knew that Favre wouldn’t want to come out, why did Favre Childress ask him to come out?
That said, we don’t fault Childress for thinking about protecting Favre. On the second-half play when defensive end Julius Peppers jumped on Favre’s back, we were reminded of the moment that Lawrence Taylor jumped on the back of Joe Theismann.
Though Favre might not be destined for such a dramatic exit, he eventually is going to get hurt if he keeps getting hit.