"MOST COACHES who've been around long enough to dig a hole and plant a coaching tree will tell you they get little pleasure out of going up against guys who used to call them boss.

Andy Reid is no different. He's coached against former assistants three times since taking the Eagles job back in 1999 - Brad Childress twice and John Harbaugh once - and each time he would've preferred root canal to tangling with one of the branches on his ever-growing tree.

He was supposed to go up against his good friend Childress again Sunday at the Linc. To make the rematch a little more palatable, Childress' family was going to make the trip to Philadelphia and spend Christmas with the Reids.

But those plans went up in smoke last month when Childress was fired by Vikings owner Zygi Wilf. Childress' defensive coordinator, Leslie Frazier, yet another former Reid disciple, was named the team's interim head coach.

Getting your first head-coaching opportunity at the expense of the man who hired you can be awkward. But it's the way the business works.

"That's hard," Reid said. "But Leslie handled it as gracefully as it can be handled, replacing a friend and still giving complete respect to Brad for the job he did. I've had a chance to talk to both guys, and they're both in good places.

"Both guys are good guys. I compare it to our two quarterbacks. That could be a rough situation if both guys didn't handle it the right way. But they have a mutual respect for each other. Leslie was 100 percent behind Brad [when he was the defensive coordinator]. I mean, 100 percent behind him. And he still feels very much the same way."

The 5-9 Vikings are 2-2 since Frazier replaced Childress. They won their first two games after he took over, beating Washington and Buffalo, but have lost the last two to the Giants and Chicago by a combined score of 61-17.

Considering that Brett Favre probably has played his last game after suffering a head injury in Monday night's 40-14 loss to the Bears, and considering that running back Adrian Peterson is questionable for Sunday night's game against the Eagles with knee and ankle injuries, the chances of the Vikings finishing on a high note aren't good. Which isn't going to help the 51-year-old Frazier's chances of being retained.

But he insists that isn't something he's even thinking about right now. "I don't think about [the interim tag] at all," he told reporters. "I'm not concerned at all what happens after the last game of the season.

"What weighs on me is the disappointment our players have right now, and trying to get things turned around, so that when we go to Philadelphia, we play a whole lot better than we played [against the Bears]."

Those kinds of comments frequently make skeptics like myself roll our eyes and say, sure, yeah, uh-huh. But former Eagles cornerback Troy Vincent, who played for Frazier and is a longtime friend, said he really means it."