Has Mike Zimmer changed? 'Ah shoot, definitely'
Zimmer’s response to COVID issues were classic Zim and new Zim at the same time
By Matthew Coller
EAGAN — As we walked back from the podium to the media room inside TCO Performance Center following Mike Zimmer’s Saturday afternoon press conference in which he expressed his frustration regarding Kirk Cousins’s absence from practice due to the QB’s unvaccinated status, the thought that lingered was whether we had just witnessed classic Mike Zimmer or a Mike Zimmer who has changed over the years.
Zimmer opened the press conference by saying he couldn’t talk about the players who wouldn’t be available for the night practice. That lasted about 43 seconds.
“I’m frustrated, not just with my football players who didn’t get vaccinated… I’m frustrated with everybody,” he said.
That was just the start. Once he dropped a “quite honestly” before an answer, you knew the gloves were coming off. Asked about Jake Browning’s chances of solidifying his spot as the backup QB with a solid practice in front of the 4,000 or so fans in attendance, Zimmer tacked on a strong jab.
“He's out there, he's available, that's important, it's important to be available when you're playing football, a team sport,” he said.
All of this is vintage. Zimmer can be the walking embodiment of the “don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it,” meme. There’s too many examples of his quite-honest style to name at once. From talking about why he didn’t let Kevin Stefanski out of his contract at the 2018 Combine to making it very clear he wanted John DeFilippo to run the ball more, to saying Kyle Sloter didn’t know how to line up the offense to calling his defense “bad” last year to making it clear that he saw all of the media’s snark about him saying Danielle Hunter’s neck injury was a “tweak.”
In a world where NFL coaches are leaning more toward saying nothing and spinning positive, Zimmer has never found much use for coach speak.
Multiple people expressed their surprise that Zimmer has so strongly come out in favor of vaccinations. Is it classic Zimmer to be so singularly focused on winning football games that he doesn’t care which side of the political spectrum thinks this, that or the other thing about vaccines? Or does his willingness to suggest that everyone should get the vax show a greater awareness? After all, nobody had Zimmer dropping the words “Delta variant” on the bingo card.
Zimmer’s latest straight-forward commentary comes just days after players and coaches who have been around the 65-year-old lifelong football man for many years said that he’s made changes recently to be more attentive to the ideas of those around him.
“Ah shoot, definitely,” linebacker Eric Kendricks said when asked if Zimmer is different now from his early days as head coach. “I feel like when I first got here he was a super old school coach and he [still] has those tendencies to his coaching style but I really feel like as we go on he tries to adapt to new techniques or new technology that he may receive in his ear from the training staff so we’re always progressing, we’re always trying to get better and he adapts to that, for sho.”
Adam Thielen said he’s mentioned to other players that he’s seen less my-way-or-highway.
“I’ll put it this way: I’ve talked to a lot of guys from other teams and guys that I look up to – Larry Fitzgerald, as an example – talked to those guys and that’s kind of what I portray to them of Coach Zim, just a guy who’s willing to adapt,” Thielen said. “That’s maybe not his M.O. but he’s willing to do it because he wants to do what it takes to win. It’s not always going to be the case but he’s willing to listen and we’ve done such a great job of having that conversation. Whether anything changes from it or not, it’s always in the best interest of the team and just having those conversations has been awesome. I think that’s (a credit) to him, management and then just the leadership of this team.”
Whether any of this ties into Stefon Diggs or not isn’t clear. In an ESPN interview last year, Diggs hinted that his frustrations came from the Vikings’ unwillingness to hear him out when it came to the team’s offensive philosophy. Diggs finished last season in Buffalo as the NFL’s leader in receptions.
Zimmer didn’t get into that one when he was asked about listening to players more these days but he did use the example of working things out with the players concerning the workload of this year’s OTAs and minicamp to demonstrate his “tweak” in philosophy.
Here’s his entire answer:
"I think, if a player comes up to me and has a good idea, I'll listen to it. You guys probably saw us out here with those white funny-looking helmets on. I had a meeting with about 20 players in the spring, and I kinda had a heads up what was coming — 'we don't want to beat each other up in the spring' and blah, blah, blah, and I said my peace like I always do. I said it's really hard for me to believe that ten practices in the spring is gonna beat up your body for the season, because you've still got a month and a half or something to recover. But it's ten practices.
Anyway, I said what I will do is I will try to take some of the contact away from the lines. I said, but we have to be able to have the receivers and quarterbacks on the timing, so they've gotta run fast, DBs gotta learn how to cover and pass off routes and things like that. So I said what I'll do is I'll take some of the pounding off the linemen so C.J. Ham isn't going and blocking Anthony Barr on a lead weak full speed in the spring. So we took a lot of that out. But I told, what we're gonna have to do when we come back here in the fall, now the lines have to earn their money, so they've gotta go out there and compete each and every day against each other so they can get better.
And then I actually walked up to Barr one time in practice during OTAs and I said 'how's your body feeling?' and he said something back to me and I walked up to Brian O'Neill — because these are some of the guys that spoke in the meeting — I said 'well how's your body feeling?' and he kind of gave me a little shove like 'c'mon coach.'"
Co-defensive coordinator Andre Patterson, who has known Zimmer for decades, said that he isn’t different as his core but this offseason Zimmer did make one change: He went in search of potential defensive changes.
“The one thing he did this year that was great was instead of us just studying the tape about what we do, we spent time studying other people and looking to see if there’s some things that we can add, that we didn’t become old, crusty coaches that just stick with what we do,” Patterson said. “I thought that was great because it caused some mass discussions in our room. You got different viewpoints from coaches all in the room, had different ideas. I think we’ve added some stuff to our package that are going to make us better.”
Zimmer said that the only way to survive in the NFL is by adapting. Without that mentality as a defensive coach, you don’t last very long. The cat-and-mouse element of football is what makes it fascinating. It’s other circumstances — like relenting on his anti-kneeling stance last year after the murder of George Floyd — that we may have seen a coach who’s been pushed toward understanding his players. With more player empowerment in recent years, coaches who don’t get players are out quick (see Patricia, Matt).
"If you've got a problem, you've gotta figure out somehow how to fix it,” Zimmer said.
Maybe that’s why Zimmer is so frustrated by key players’ lack of vaccinations. It isn’t something he can adjust or change or study or break down. He’s tried to fix it by bringing in the the NFL’s lead doctor. He’s tried to fix it by telling unvaccinated players that things would be harder on them. Now he’s trying to fix it by calling out everyone in front of the world.
In that way, he isn’t different. He’s bounced back after every down season in Minnesota in part because he does anything and everything to fix things. But COVID and vaccinations are out of his control and in a year in which he’s facing a great deal of pressure, well, you could feel the helplessness in his podium comments.
“[What if] something like this happens a day before a game that has a chance to get you to the playoffs?” Zimmer said.
He knows there’s no amount of changes that will alter the results when you’re without your star players. And Zimmer wants it to matter that he’s been able to adapt.
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Great job Mathew now let's hope he closes the gap on a more balanced attack no more handing off to Delvin Cook on 2nd and long.
Good article Matthew! I think Coach Zimmer is a very good coach and should remain with the Vikings. The Wilfs are businessmen and it makes me wonder how they view their team: A money making organization (I believe it does) or a vehicle to winning the big one? Of course few people know, as you’ve pointed out, they don’t say too much…