Before opening the door to his dorm suite on Minnesota State's campus, Brad Childress offers a warning: "It's pretty funkified in here." Ah, the glamour life of an NFL head coach. Shortly after Childress arrived in Mankato for training camp, the AC in his room blew up, leaking water all over the carpet and, after a few hours, releasing a stank that can only be described as eau de Blutarsky. An assistant tried to mask the mess-up with carpet freshener, to no avail. "Now it smells like sugar on vomit," says Childress. "So come on in!"
For Childress, the more funkified the better. How else to explain why, as a candidate for any of this past off-season's 10 head-coaching vacancies, he signed quickly with the Vikings, whose performances of late, both on and off the field, have truly reeked. The hard-nosed, no-nonsense Childress is exactly what the Vikes went looking for last January. In fact, owner Zygi Wilf was so taken with the ex-Eagles offensive coordinator that he wouldn't let Childress leave town until a deal was reached. Wilf thinks he's found his team's savior, someone with a personality and plan powerful enough to improve the team and keep Love Boat scandals at bay. Someone so intense his idea of decorating is limited to hanging a fly swatter on his dorm wall.
But piled atop Childress' kitchen table, next to a bag of Jolly Ranchers, are his blueprints. It's the first day of August, opening day of camp, and Childress has scripted every play for every practice for the next three weeks. His rules are so detailed that even pranks (like superglueing bike locks) are listed as no-nos. And written in bold red letters across the top of the first handout given to players is the phrase "Shooting for Miami."
It's an ambitious trajectory, one perfectly suited to a man who approaches his job with the focus of a NASA flight director. Failure is not an option for Childress, as he tries to transform the Vikes from scandal-ridden to playoff-bound. Here's a look at the first four days of his first training camp, from inside mission control.
Aug. 1, 2006: 9:22 a.m.
It's raining. But water can't wash away details.
A strip of purple-and-gold tape is laid across the line of scrimmage, as running backs warm up with a series of simple, seemingly meaningless handoffs. Then, 37 minutes into the first practice, Childress blows the drill dead. He walks to the 32-yard line, bends so close to the grass that rain splashes back up into his face and points to a single cleat mark. He begins chomping his gum so hard it makes his thick mustache dance. He marches up to running back Adimchinobe Echemandu and, while pointing to a tiny dimple in the turf, says "course integrity" over and over and over.
A psych major back at Eastern Illinois, Childress believes that repetitive speech leads to retention. He calls his mantras "fence posts," and he likes to, as he says, "plant 'em deep by repeating them until guys are sick to death. Then I say them once more, because that's usually when the light goes on."
On this play, Childress tells the players, the goal is to move the linebacker laterally before he attacks the hole. This will square him up on the shoulders of a 320-pound offensive guard. Advantage, Vikes. The whole play, he continues, hinges on the back drawing the 'backer to a specific spot, which means the runner must be precise about hitting his mark: the inside foot of the offensive tackle.
Echemandu sheepishly follows his coach's finger down to the grass. He was off by less than half a foot, but it might as well have been a half mile.
No team in the league has experienced as much wholesale change as the Vikings. Childress traded franchise QB Daunte Culpepper, hired 21 assistants and installed new West Coast and Cover 2 schemes. But the coach is convinced that his squad's transformation will be subtle, taking place on an almost subatomic level, one play, one inch, one cleat mark at a time. "Everybody in the NFL has the same plays," he says. "That means the minutiae, the mastery of the details, separates great teams from everyone else. You always want the perfect game, perfect practice, perfect play. But it hasn't been coached yet." Aug. 1, 2006: 4:37 p.m.
On the final play of the afternoon practice, Brad Johnson tucks the ball under his arm and runs. The dumbfounded defense eventually chases him out of bounds, but not before the nearly 38-year-old QB flashes a handbehind-the-head high-step. The move draws the ire of linebacker Napoleon Harris, and gut-busting laughter from everyone else, Childress included.
The West Coast O is predicated on receivers gaining yards after the catch, which requires a quickthinking, accurate QB to hit them in stride. Johnson may be old and a tad dorky, but he's working on an NFL record of 10 straight seasons with a completion rate of at least 60%. In a scrimmage later that week, Johnson will hit every one of his passes while facing blitz pressure from the Chiefs D.
Still, much has been made about Johnson's age and, therefore, his fragility. Childress took steps to protect his QB by giving free agent Steve Hutchinson a seven-year, $49M deal, the largest ever for an offensive guard. And Johnson allayed any of his new boss' fears about his age by acting as excited as a rookie when camp opened. In the team cafeteria, Johnson rushed up to Childress and handed him a list and some tape of plays he'd been thinking about during the off-season. "How about this job, huh?" Johnson roared with delight. "Three squares, a bed to sleep in, all this football. What more could you ask for?"
Aug. 1, 2006: 7:30 p.m.
Under a threatening indigo sky, Childress walks across campus to meet with the Vikings offense. Today they install their third-and-short game plan.
As a teenager growing up in Aurora, Ill., Childress was set adrift by his parents' nasty divorce. Before he was too far gone, he moved into the basement of family friend Chuck Dickerson, football coach at Marmion Military Academy. Childress played QB at Marmion, and after graduating from EIU, became a coach—one who still subscribes to Dickerson's belief that teaching and mentoring are the most sacred aspects of the job.
These "install meetings" are where Childress shines, making complicated concepts straightforward and easy to absorb. Using an overhead projector, the offense reviews each play, position by position, so that every player understands his tactical link to the others. Childress doesn't just draw up a play, like All Go, and expect players to have learned its nuances by reading the playbook. He says, "This is an All Go, and [wideout] Aaron Hosack, you need to get closer to the red line on this." Or maybe, "Shallow Cross here, and Jermaine [Wiggins], remember, when you approach a wall of linebackers, the rule is you have to go underneath." Every once in a while, he'll even put up a short PowerPoint about a specific topic, such as how tipped balls can damage an offense. "This is Generation Y," Childress says later. "You can't just tell them to do something. You have to explain the why, too."
He is disciplined and detail-oriented without coming across as condescending or draconian. Cornerback Fred Smoot calls this the Joe Gibbs effect. "There are coaches you play for because it's your job, and others you lay it on the line for because you respect them like your granddaddy," says Smoot, who played for Gibbs two seasons ago. "With the talent even, great coaching is the difference in the NFL. And that's what we got here now."
First-time offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell runs the meeting, while Childress picks and chooses spots to interject. Sometimes he asks his coordinator a question, other times he just gives orders. Three-quarters of the way through, a tornado alarm sounds. Childress must decide what's more important: safety or third-and-short? He pauses, then tells Bevell to continue while he goes outside to check the sky. It's all clear.
Aug. 2, 2006: 5:20 a.m.
As Childress steps onto a treadmill inside a cavernous but perfectly still field house, he has one
thing on his mind: nose tackle Pat Williams.
Williams arrived at camp weighing 334 pounds, two pounds heavier than his assigned reporting weight. Having stressed a "culture of directness" and "accountability" as two of his fence posts, Childress couldn't start camp by letting Williams slide. So he placed him on the physically unable to perform list, forcing an embarrassed Williams to spend the first week of camp working with trainers, ostracized from the team. It was a risky move for a seemingly insignificant amount of weight, especially since star players can lead a revolt as easily as they can support a new agenda. The day after, the decision was still weighing on the coach's mind. "As much as you want to say, Gosh dang, that's our starting nose tackle, you can't," Childress says. "Some things can't be negotiable."
Childress didn't yet know that, after No. 1 wideout Koren Robinson's arrest two weeks later, dealing with Williams' spare tire would be a pleasure.
For a man charged with rehabbing the Vikings image, re-signing Robinson was as risky a move as trading Culpepper. Robinson had spent four seasons as a problem in Seattle, which cut him after a DUI in the spring of 2005. Yet, following a 28-day stint in rehab last August, he signed with the Vikes as a free agent, became a Pro Bowl kick returner and was awarded the Ed Block Courage Award by his teammates. Last March, Childress anointed Robinson his No. 1 receiver by signing off on a three-year, $12.7M contract offer. Then, on Aug. 15, the players' first full day off from camp, Robinson was charged with DWI and fleeing police after he was clocked going 104 mph.
To fed up fans, Robinson's arrest is just the latest in boorish behavior from a lawless franchise. For Childress, though, it's a reminder that his biggest challenges may not come on Sundays. He's trying to change what he calls the "it's all good" 'tude that has infected a generation and a franchise. "You wanna drink a case of beer, you wanna stay out all night? Guys tell each other, It's all good," he says. "No one wants to tell a teammate, Hey, get your head out of your ass." Childress says he doesn't want to be the guard in Cool Hand Luke—with every infraction meaning a night in the box. What he wants is a culture where players police, push and praise one another. And Robinson's arrest is proof that sometimes he'll feel like he's running in place.
Aug. 2, 2006: 11:15 a.m.
On his way back to his room after Wednesday morning's practice, Childress passes a picture of Edvard Munch's The Scream on the lobby wall. Seconds later his cell phone rings. It's Wilf.
"Coach, we need to look into something," the owner says.
"Sure, what's up?" says Childress.
"Mark [Wilf's younger brother and team president] says yesterday's practice is on YouTube."
"It's on YOUWHAT?!" yells Childress.
With four kids, the 50-year-old Childress knows exactly what YouTube is, and that having his team's practice on the site is bad. Remaining calm while mentally Rolodexing every play he might have to change, Childress calls his assistant to get the story. Turns out, a newbie from the team's radio affiliate has taken video of yesterday's practice and posted it on the station's website, which uses YouTube's server. The footage is taken down, and the station apologizes. Disaster averted.
In 1993, when Wisconsin played Michigan State in Japan, Childress, the Badgers offensive coordinator at the time, consulted NASA experts about combating the effects of jet lag. (Wisconsin won the game and, later that season, the Rose Bowl.) This summer, he researched an Army study on dehydration, becoming an expert on testing urine to detect dehydration.
YouTube aficionado. Sleep expert. Urine specialist. If it helps win games, Childress is for it. "You plan and you organize, and you expect your day to go one way," he says, laughing. "And pretty soon you're racing in another direction, because of YouTube. That's what no one tells you about in head-coaching school, right?"
Aug. 3, 2006: 9:30 a.m.
After the day's first two series of drills, Childress walks up to his defense. "I haven't heard a single pad pop yet, men!" he shouts. His vision for the Vikes D is this: A frenzy of disruption caused by big guys who can run fast and little guys who can hit hard. But this morning, Childress hasn't seen anything of the kind.
Each day he makes a point to connect with a handful of defensive players, acutely aware of his
offensive bias. "I used to jump up and down for first downs in practice," Childress says. "Now I sit there, ambivalent. When something goes good on offense, something went wrong on defense."
Childress gets an idea of how the defense is responding to him during the very next drill, when safety Dwight Smith charges into a pileup screaming, "I will kill your weak ass. Come on, come on, let's get this on!" On the next play, safety Tank Williams levels wideout Kevin Kasper. And on the play after that, rookie safety Greg Blue leaves tight end Richard Owens noodlelegged on a seam route, like a boxer taking a standing eight count.
As the defense celebrates around Owens, DB coach Joe Woods screams to Blue, "That's why we drafted your ass." Later, Smith relates the defense's new motto: Play like your hair's on fire. Asked to clarify, the safety glares for a moment, then says, "Light your hair on fire and find out."
Aug. 4, 2006: 2:30 p.m.
The notion of being referred to as a savior in this story has been eating at Childress. He's worried that he'll come across as a first-year head coach who sounds like he invented the game. So, a few hours before the Vikings practice with the Chiefs, he dials the phone and gets sent to voice mail. "This stuff is not revolutionary," his message says. "I'm just passing along what I've learned from great coaches over 30 years, ya know?"
Aug. 4, 2006: 7:01 p.m.
Covered in purple bunting, the steep cementbench stands of Minnesota State's Blakeslee Stadium are packed to capacity. When the Chiefs jog onto the field, they drag along the smell from a brat stand. Childress' wife, Dru-Ann, looks on from the grass behind the end zone. The air is crisp, crackling with nervous energy.
After calling the first play, Childress moves to the side and watches, cap low and hands on knees. Johnson barks out the signals. It's a run. Pads collide. Players grunt and groan. The back hits his landmark, bursts through a hole and goes untouched toward midfield. The crowd erupts.
Childress rocks forward, adjusts his cap and unfolds his script, searching for play No. 2.