Vikings = Public Enemy #1

It's funny to see them squirm. They act all high and mighty, but what they did was no different than Seattle. Seattle had no shot at Hutchinson--unless they guaranteed his entire contract. I just wish Minnesota has more RFAs to bid on.

From Yahoo:

# It was interesting to listen to the bubbling feud between the Seattle Seahawks and Minnesota Vikings, who have engaged in a highly publicized round of free-agent warfare.

Seattle lost the transition-tagged Steve Hutchinson to the Vikings because of the use of a controversial "poison pill" in his contract that would have made his entire salary guaranteed if he wasn't the team's highest-paid offensive lineman (that was unlikely for the Seahawks since they feature All-Pro tackle Walter Jones).

Seattle responded by making a similar offer to tagged Vikings wide receiver Nate Burleson, with a trigger that would have made his entire salary guaranteed if he played more than five games in the state of Minnesota.

Clearly, the Vikings weren't all that thrilled with the taste of their own medicine.

"The first time I ever heard of a poison pill was when I got here a few months ago," new Vikings head coach Brad Childress said. "How many of you had ever heard of it? And what form it could take? When I saw the one that came back from Seattle – "plays five games in the state of Minnesota" – I go, 'That's out of the box.' I wouldn't have thought of it. Really, it's so obvious, it hits you in the nose."

Though he didn't come out and say it, Childress clearly thought the Seahawks pushed contract creativity a little far.

"All we did was get together with his agent, get together a contract and say, 'Hey, a guy has to be the highest-paid lineman on their team – Walter Jones.' We thought it was a creative (clause). But it wasn't, 'If he doesn't play a game in Alaska …' Could you have thought of something that absurd?"

Mike Holmgren's reaction?

"That was very distasteful, our having to jump into something like that and retaliate," he said.

# Childress revealed yet another chapter of the Daunte Culpepper saga with the Vikings – this one surrounding Culpepper's rehabilitation choices for his damaged knee. Childress spelled out the details of a conversation where Culpepper refused to return to Minnesota to rehabilitate his injured knee, a talk that is believed to be the breaking point between Vikings coaches and their former quarterback.

"You ask, where is he rehabbing? He's rehabbing in a HealthSouth place in Orlando," Childress said. "I close my eyes (to remember it), I'm seeing a Chinese restaurant, a HealthSouth place, a laundromat – a strip mall that he's rehabbing himself at. And I'm thinking, 'What did they have in there?' They had a stepmaster and some other things. In other words, all the modalities we have in our training room, all the different things, there are so many different things you can do. You can't accelerate that protocol, but you can be doing different things when you hit a wall, when you're sore but need to keep going."

Childress said trainer Eric Sugarman went to Florida to gauge the progress Culpepper had been making with his rehab, and he ended up doing an eyeball test in – of all places – a Wal-Mart parking lot.

"(Culpepper's) guy asked, 'Do you want to see him move around?' " Childress said. "(Sugarman) said, 'I'd love to see him move around. Will he do that?' They say, yeah. And they go into a Wal-Mart parking lot to do his movement.

"So you can understand where I'm coming from. There's the HealthSouth, the Chinese restaurant, the laundromat, here's the alley, out the backdoor and into the Wal-Mart parking lot. I'm like, 'What's wrong with this picture?' Are you with me? I'm going, come on now. Is he better served in the (Minnesota) field house or the Wal-Mart parking lot? … I think he was doing himself a disservice. I told him, I think you're doing yourself a disservice. You can do better for yourself than that."