The angle that news media quickly pounced on in their stories on the hiring of new Vikings Head Coach Brad Childress was that he’ll be a disciplinarian for an undisciplined team. It is, I admit, the first thing I thought when I read in his bio that he attended a military high school; perhaps he’ll bring some of that military discipline to the team. On the other hand, the guy’s 49 years old it was in high school when he experienced the military life, so there’s that.
At any rate, it didn’t take much reading between the lines that the presumed discipline the team needed was off the field. That’s clearly true, but if there’s one major criticism I had of Mike Tice, it’s that his teams were consistently undisciplined on the field; that lack of discipline most frequently manifested itself in the form of penalties. On offense, they were penalties that consistently killed drives and on defense they were avoidable penalties that kept their opponent alive.
To me, that’s the coaches’ fault. And for whatever reason, Tice never got that part right. It remains to be seen what kind of coach Childress will be, but at the very least, he’s got a stellar resume.