Vikings coach Brad Childress faced questions on Wednesday regarding mounting reports that, as we’ve characterized it, a “faction” of players want Tarvaris Jackson to be the starting quarterback.
For weeks, we’ve been hearing that some players prefer Jackson; Adam Schefter of ESPN made a similar report on Monday.
“You know, I’ve seen the same reports that you’ve seen,” Childress said, according to Sean Jensen of St. Paul Pioneer Press.
“Those are opinion,” he added later. “It’s hard to shoot holes in an opinion. Opinions are just that, it’s an opinion. I certainly don’t see anything that looks close to that.”
And that’s understandable. Players who want Jackson aren’t going to approach Childress and say, “Hey, Coach. That old fart you brought in here sucks. We want T-Jack or we quit.”
Running back Adrian Peterson, whom we’ve heard is a staunch Favre supporter, said he’s aware of no players on the team who prefer Jackson. “I’m not sensing nothing like that at all,” Peterson said, which of course technically means that he is. “I don’t know where that came from. That’s news to me.”
But it seems that Childress is being more realistic, and in a roundabout way honest, about the situation. Jackson has spent three-plus years with the team. Certainly, there will be players who like him, and who might be allowing their personal feelings cloud their assessment of whether Jackson gives the team the best chance to win.
“Well, I think it’s tremendous that guys feel that way about their teammates,” Childress said. “We don’t live in a vacuum, certainly. They don’t sit at their stalls and not get to know each other. That’s part of the dynamic.
“But people come and go, and that’s a part of the dynamic, too. It’s a part of this deal. Does anybody like it? No. Like I told you before, that’s the hardest job, when you have to tell people their dream is done. But it is a dynamic that’s real.”
We continue to believe that this very real dynamic is causing multiple players to support Jackson.
And, as Schefter now reports, other players want Sage Rosenfels, who was solid in the preseason opener against the Colts.
Schefter also says that there currently is “little support” for Favre in the locker room.
Based on everything we’ve heard, we think Favre enjoys a greater following than that. But the bottom line is that Favre hasn’t sparked the kind of immediate consensus that he surely assumed he’d find upon arriving in the Twin Cities as the aging superhero with the “aw, shucks” demeanor.