As the NFL continued to mourn the tragic shooting death of Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor, Vikings coach Brad Childress was asked for his reaction.

Childress said he learned of Taylor’s death at about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday when he received a text message from Vikings left tackle Bryant McKinnie. Taylor and McKinnie had been teammates at the University of Miami.

Childress said Taylor’s death was the first thing that was addressed this morning when he met with his players.

“The thing that we talk about is when I walk back in that meeting room on a Wednesday[after giving the] guys two days off, I’m genuinely glad to see those 53 guys,” Childress said. “Whether you have children, and some of them have young kids, or whether you have a teenager or young adults in their 20s. People that do understand laying in bed at night and doing a mental inventory of, ‘OK, they’re all in bed or I’ve got one that is still out there somewhere.’

“And so I do the same thing with those 53 guys. Some of the guys can relate to that that have children. We talked about Sean, we talked about his child, we talked about his girlfriend and certainly about his family and his parents, who always think you’re [not] going to outlive your child.

“And then we talked about the fragility of life that there is no bartering for. Whether it’s somebody running a stoplight or somebody coming into your house, you just don’t know. And so you need to live all the days to your fullest.”

McKinnie was on the field for the Vikings walk-through today and Childress said he’s doing better. “I think he’s had a chance to speak with all of his teammates that knew and interacted with Sean,” Childress said. “Obviously, Bryant has a home in Florida and so he and Sean … he was a junior when Sean came as a freshman. There’s that almost littler brother type nature to it. It’s very difficult for him.”

Practice update: Defensive end Kenechi Udeze was not on the field for the portion of practice that is open to the media. Childress did not mention Udeze in his news conference so we’ll have to wait until the injury report comes out to see what’s going on. Running back Adrian Peterson (knee) and cornerback Antoine Winfield (hamstring) were on the field. Safety Tank Williams (knee) was not.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.