In an interview with the Pioneer Press, Brad Childress gives his version of his departure from Minnesota.

“If you pull a couple of quotes from a locker room, it all gets exacerbated a bit,” Childress said. “By and large, I know the support I had. It’s a good group of guys in that locker room.”

Regarding Moss, Childress heard late in the process that Moss was lobbying to owner Zygi Wilf for Childress to be fired, but he was already set on waiving him. Childress did not consult with upper management about the move.

Not every Viking was against parting with Moss.

“Some players came up to me afterward and said, ‘Coach, we would have been disappointed if you didn’t do something,’ ” Childress said.

Sure, Childress’s stories are anecdotal and he’s probably overstating the support he had in the locker room, but with the way Moss was reportedly acting, it wouldn’t be surprising if there were several players who understood why Childress put him on waivers.

Whatever the issues, Childress will receive $5 million total through the 2012 season, which isn’t a bad severance package.

Here it is:

Moss has become an expensive, high-maintenance decoy. Popular wisdom holds that Moss stretches the field, takes the safeties out of the box, and enables you to run the ball and get one-on-one coverage everywhere else. It has not worked for the Vikings or the Titans. And years from now when we want to study a free agent setting himself on fire in his walk year, we will study Randy Moss 2010.

That about sums it up, doesn’t it?

Somewhere in Pittsburgh right now, Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick just read Randy Moss’ stat line from his first game as a Titan and said, “Suck it, Randy.”

After being a malcontent in his previous two stops, Moss is now working on his third team this season and he’s already 0-1. While he was targeted four times in the Titans’ 29-17 loss to the Dolphins on Sunday, he caught just one pass for 26 yards in his Tennessee debut.

And that catch didn’t come until the Titans’ final drive in the fourth quarter.

Moss spent most of the day riding the bench and he even admitted after the game that he wasn’t as good as he could be.

“My debut, man, it was actually a bad game for me. I think I just tried to be as much help to them as I could, just try to play within the offense. So I felt comfortable out there, but I don’t think that I had a very good overall game. I think that my blocking really wasn’t that good, where I wanted it to be. So I’ll just go back at the drawing board and come back again next week.”

As for the players who did factor into the game, Chad Henne completed 19-of-28 passes for 240 yards with one touchdown and an interception. The only reason Henne was in the game was because Chad Pennington (who’s season, if not career, is likely over with) hurt his shoulder just two snaps into the first quarter. Then Henne injured his knee in the second half and had to be replaced by Tyler Thigpen, who completed 4-of-6 passes for 64 yards and a touchdown.

Henne, who was on crutches following the game, will have an MRI on his knee Sunday night. If he can’t go, Thigpen would get the nod against the Bears next week.

The win was big for the Dolphins, who remain two games behind the Jets in the division. The loss drops the Titans a game back of the Colts in both the win and loss columns, and into a tie with the Jaguars at 5-4.

According to ESPN’s Ed Werder, Vikings owner Zygi Wilf nearly fired Brad Childress after the head coach waived Randy Moss earlier this week before talking to Wilf about the decision. The report states that Wilf was “furious about being circumvented” and almost kept Moss.

I’m actually surprised Wilf didn’t fire Childress. His front office went out and traded a third round pick to acquire Moss and his lame-brain head coach waived him four weeks later because he doesn’t know how to handle big personalities like the ones Moss and Favre have. Given Wilf’s reaction to the situation, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Childress overstepped his boundaries here.

Either way, I don’t see how Childress keeps his job past this season. He managed to get the Vikings to the NFC title game last year but now that everything has fallen apart, it’s apparent he has no idea how to right the ship. Granted, not having Sidney Rice has been a major blow to the offense and there’s no doubt that he was vital to the Vikes’ success last season. But this is still a talented team and it’s up to Childress to figure out ways to win when one of his star players goes down with an injury. That’s what he’s paid to do – that’s what his job is and he hasn’t delivered.

That said, I credit Wilf for not making a snap decision and firing Childress the moment he heard about Moss being waived. He might as well stand by his head coach now and let Childress hang himself as the season wears on. Because the Vikings are toast – they’re not coming back. Wilf just has to ride out these next nine weeks and then he’ll have everything he needs to tell Childress to hit the road. (Even though the head coach still has three more years left on his current deal.)

Per the Minneapolis Star-Tribune…

After catching only one pass for 8 yards in the Vikings’ 28-18 loss to the New England Patriots, Moss walked into the visitors’ locker room where Wilf and other executives stood. According to an NFL source familiar with what transpired, Moss told the Vikings owner in no uncertain terms that Childress wasn’t a good coach and should be fired.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and sometimes those desperate measures involve risks that completely blow up in your face. Here we have a coach, who will likely be fired at the end of the season, waiving a talented yet temperamental receiver (whom he just acquired four weeks earlier at the cost of a third-round pick) without even consulting ownership. And as it turns out, that receiver, just four weeks into his stint with his new team, called for the dismissal of the coach.

You can’t make this stuff up, people.

Pundits thought that one of the reasons why the Titans put a claim in for Randy Moss was because Kenny Britt’s hamstring injury would sideline him for a good chunk of the season.

Apparently they were right.

Citing a league source, Terry McCormick of Titans Insider is reporting that Britt could miss the next 6-8 weeks. Jeff Fisher sounded optimistic recently about Britt’s hamstring injury but if McCormick’s report is true, the Titans will be without their top wideout for most of the second half.

The Titans better get Randy Moss up to speed quickly because if he can’t make an impact out of the gates next week (the team has a bye this Sunday), defenses will continue to load up the box to stop Chris Johnson. It remains to be seen how motivated Moss will be to play for Tennessee, which is a serious playoff contender but certainly not in the same realm as the Patriots.

The Titans have claimed Randy Moss off waivers from the Vikings according to Jim Wyatt via his Twitter page. They were also the only team to put in a claim on the troublemaker.

The only thing that remains to be seen is if the Titans are good enough to acquire Moss’ services. Earlier in the day, Ian Rapoport of the Boston Herald reported that the receiver would be willing to sit out the remainder of the season if he dislikes the team that claims him. He apparently wants a ring and won’t allow a little thing like self respect get in the way of what he wants most in life.

If you haven’t picked up on my distaste for Moss (it’s more of his attitude than him as a player) in the first two paragraphs, let me lay it on a little thicker for you: I hope he doesn’t want to play for Tennessee and he winds up sitting out the rest of the year. Then, in protest of his attitude, none of the 32 teams pick up the phone and call him this offseason.

But that’s not going to happen. Even at his age, he’s too talented for teams to stay away, although I find it interesting that the Titans were the only ones to put a claim in.

If does he report, he’ll make Chris Johnson even more lethal because teams won’t be able to stack the box and leave their corners on an island with Tennessee’s receivers. Moss is too good not to at least have a safety shading to his side, so CJ might see some open running lanes.

This of course doesn’t bode well for Kenny Britt’s hamstring injury. He won’t play in Week 10 when the Titans come back from their bye and if the team thought he could return shortly thereafter, there would be no sense in claiming Moss. They’re 30th in pass attempts per game and obviously their commitment is to getting Johnson the ball, so if Britt was healthy I imagine they would have taken a pass on Moss.

We’ll see how this all turns out. But given that it’s Randy Moss, it probably won’t be pretty.

Randy Moss has made more money in his 13-year career than most people will make in a lifetime, which must give him the right to treat others like dirt.

According to a report by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Moss screamed at the co-owner of Tinucci’s Restaurant and Catering in the locker room after a Vikings practice last week because he apparently didn’t like the way the buffet looked.

“[Moss] came walking up,” Gus Tinucci said. “There were a couple of guys that were in line. I was carving some meat for a guy and all of a sudden I heard all this screaming and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ I knew who it was immediately. I looked up and there he was.”

Tinucci said Moss used two profane words in a sentence where the ex-Vikings receiver said he wouldn’t feed the food to his dog.

“I was in shock,” Tinucci said. “I couldn’t believe it. It was quiet in there.”

Tinucci said he heard one player tell Moss to shut up. He wasn’t sure which player. A veteran player sent the Star Tribune a text message Tuesday that described Moss’ outburst as “bad.” Tinucci said two Vikings employees approached him afterward and apologized.

These are the type of stories about athletes that make you sick. Tinucci and his staff are professionals just like the Vikings, yet Moss felt the need to disrespect them for no reason. If he didn’t like the food, he could have politely declined and allowed his teammates to enjoy their dinner. He obviously has enough money to buy whatever dish he wants, so why be a jerk?

Of course, this wasn’t about the food. It was about Moss drawing attention to himself because he’s self-centered and self-conscious. He wanted to make sure that he caused a scene because he wants everyone to know how unhappy he is (for whatever reason). He’s a child and a brat, and here’s hoping he loses the use of his hands in some crazy knife and spoon eating accident.

What an a-hole.

Brad Childress didn’t say much to the media on Wednesday about the Randy Moss situation, although he did admit that trading for the troubled receiver was a “poor decision.”

Not to mince words, but I actually disagree with Childress’ take on the Moss trade. It wasn’t a poor decision – it was a horrible decision. A horrendous decision. A decision that should cost Childress his job.

I don’t know who the genius was behind the Moss trade, but Childress is the one who should take the fall for it. He signs off on whom he wants on his 53-man roster and obviously he put his Herbie Hancock on the deal or else it never would have happened. Then, after he shockingly couldn’t handle Moss’ rotten attitude, he waived him four weeks later.

In the grand scheme of things, losing a third round pick in a trade that doesn’t pan out isn’t the end of the world. It happens all the time in the NFL. But when you give up a third round pick for a guy who you know is a malcontent and then you waive him four weeks later because he was being a malcontent, said trade falls into the unnecessary and idiotic categories.

Why the Vikings didn’t sit down with Moss and give him a new contract immediately after acquiring him is beyond me. I mean, you made the decision to give up a third round pick and you knew he wanted money, yet you don’t pay him? Don’t you think it would have been smart to make a financial commitment to a guy who mails it in if he’s unhappy about his contract? How unbelievably stupid and shortsighted. What did Childress think, that Moss was going to be a good boy and play on his current deal because he got the opportunity to play with Lord Favre? Dude doesn’t care about Favre – he cares about money. And he wasn’t going to take the Vikings to a Super Bowl with Favre playing as bad as he was.

The Minnesota Vikings will never win a Super Bowl with Brad Childress as their head coach, their offensive coordinator or the person in charge of scrapping the gum off the Metrodome seats at the end of games. He clearly doesn’t know how to handle NFL personalities, his play calling is a joke in pressure situations and he can’t be trusted to make big decisions in terms of personal.

This Randy Moss situation is an absolute mess.

The only thing that mattered to this guy four weeks ago was a new contract and then after he realized he wasn’t going to win, he had no problem trashing the Vikings (a team that gave up a third round pick to acquire him) in an attempt to get the Patriots to welcome him back with open arms. How pathetic.

Moss doesn’t miss the Patriots — he misses the opportunity to play for a winner. He realized very quickly that the Vikings aren’t going to win, so he did the only thing he does well off the field: resort to being a malcontent and a distraction.

Make no mistake, Moss has a ton of talent, even at his age. He’s a game changer when he has his head on straight and he even commands double-teams when he’s really trying.

But when is that? He wanted out of Oakland so bad that he didn’t say a word for the first couple of seasons in New England. He was a choirboy because all he wanted to do was be a part of a winner. But when he got that, it wasn’t enough and the second his contract only had one year remaining on it he reverted back to the old Moss.

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