Vikings respond poorly to narrow loss

As usual, yesterday's game wasn't available in my area — instead, I got to watch the Seahawks have their way with the hapless Giants . . . I turned off the TV when Seattle had a 42-point lead. An ugly game, unless you're a Seahawk fan.

The Vikings had a narrow lead over the Bears for most of the game, but were unable to pull back ahead after Chicago scored a touchdown inside the last two minutes. The Star Tribune show a team that doesn't quite rank with the top teams in the league, at least in the way they cope with adversity:

If teams are best judged by their reaction to adversity, the Vikings have some work to do before they can ascend to the NFL's elite.

On the one hand, Richardson provided a necessary emotional pickup. Center Matt Birk stood tall as well, taking the blame for a fumbled exchange between quarterback Brad Johnson and running back Chester Taylor in the fourth quarter. [. . .]

On the other hand, several players inexplicably took time from their postgame routine to complain about a full-page photo of Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher in Sunday morning's Star Tribune. Although the accompanying story chronicled the Vikings' progress on defense — and, most important, had nothing to do with the outcome of the game — some Vikings took offense that Urlacher was the visual emphasis.

Even Childress fell victim to the pettiness, spending only 2 minutes and 11 seconds in his postgame news conference. Scheduling confusion left many reporters unaware that he had entered the Vikings' interview room; Childress answered only three questions and ended the session as reporters were still arriving — leaving many of the game's key issues unaddressed by the purported singular voice of the franchise.

It's been a good run so far for the new coach and rebuilding team: beating two teams who were widely touted as playoff-bound before the season started, and playing as well as they did against the Bears is nothing to be ashamed of . . . but Childress needs to be more supportive of the local media, or he'll get the same sort of ride that former coach Mike Tice did last year: every flaw will be examined under the microscope, and every positive will be explained away as a fluke. Childress is probably too thin-skinned to suffer that for the next 14 weeks of the regular season, and he will, if he doesn't make more effort to keep the local media on-side now.