Five weeks ago the Vikings hosted the Cowboys in a battle of 1-3 teams coming off of successful playoff seasons and expecting to be Super Bowl contenders. The Vikings won that ugly game 24-21. Dallas would lose three more increasingly embarrassing games before firing Wade Phillips, while the Vikings lost two tough games at Green Bay and New England and won a thrilling overtime game against Arizona in which Brett Favre threw for 448 yards.
↵Dallas had been forced to get real, sitting at 1-7 and with a roster clearly not ready to compete at an NFL level. Jerry Jones promoted Jason Garrett on an interim basis, and the Cowboys have appeared to be at least inching along the road to recovery with two straight wins and visibly greater effort and focus. The Vikings, on the other hand, clung to those last scraps of playoff hope, heading into division games with Chicago and Green Bay.
↵Just as with Wade Phillips, an embarrassing loss - this one at home - to the Packers finally did Brad Childress in, as the Vikings sunk once again to match the Cowboys' 3-7 record. What is the moral here? Despite a widely held belief that midseason firings don't accomplish anything, I suppose once it's clear that an entire team has finished playing hard for a coach, there is little point in proceeding with without change.