How Mike Zimmer learned to stop worrying and love the bomb
The Vikings' head coach is telling is QB: Let loose. It's different but it's right
ZOOM — OK who replaced Mike Zimmer with Bruce Arians? How long before he drops a, “No risk it, no biscuit?”
Well, he almost did on Monday.
Kirk Cousins told the media postgame that he might have been overly aggressive during the Vikings’ 34-31 win over the Green Bay Packers. Zimmer said he disagrees with his veteran quarterback.
“I want him to keep doing it like he’s doing it,” Zimmer said. “He can’t second guess himself. If he throws an interception, that’s life. But you keep going for the jugular, it’s going to open up a lot of other areas in the running game. It’s going to open up other players. We’ve just got to keep being that way.”
Cousins did have a point. Per Pro Football Focus, he threw the ball more than 20 yards downfield six times and three of them resulted in turnover-worthy plays.
However, on passes that went between 10-19 yards, he was 7-for-7 with 165 yards and a perfect passer rating.
Zimmer is openly saying now that he wants more of this. He said it last week after the Los Angeles game. He said it Sunday after the Packers game. He said it again on Monday. It’s clear the Vikings’ head coach had a Come To Bradshaw moment somewhere along the line.
It wasn’t that long ago, back in 2018, when Zimmer grew frustrated with Cousins turning the ball over and pointed out to his quarterback that people’s jobs are on the line when he’s flinging the rock.
It was two years ago when Stefon Diggs no-showed at practice over frustration with the run-first offense (and later revealed that the team wouldn’t hear him out on the subject).
It was just last year that the Vikings ranked 27th in passing attempts. The majority of Cousins’s passes came while they were playing from behind.
When did Zimmer become Dr. DeepPass?
There’s a few possible explanations.
The first is that he’s always wanted to have an explosive offense. At the end of last season, he praised Gary Kubiak and called the 2020 offense the most explosive that he’s had since joining the Vikings in 2014. The numbers are fairly even with 2019 in terms of passes that traveled more than 20 yards (61 throws in 2019 vs. 65 in 2020) but Cousins set a career high in yards per completion under Gary.
Zimmer has also been a proponent of play-action passes for years. When Stefanski took over, the Vikings’ head coach talked about the importance of the run game in context with play-fakes and creating space to take shots. Over the last two years, we’ve seen that play out with opposing defenses focusing on Dalvin Cook.
But this year the Vikings’ running game simply isn’t as effective as it has been over the last two years. PFF ranks the Vikings 19th in run blocking and they are 30th in Expected Points Added on the ground. Last year they were eighth in running EPA and 16th in 2019. Explosive plays are still coming from Cook, who is third in runs of 10+ yards, but the Vikings are not getting consistent gains.
You can bet it isn’t lost on Zimmer that his running game isn’t the same. Just like he’s probably noticed how many times the Vikings threw short of the sticks on third down in past weeks. Before Sunday’s 9-for-13 outburst on third down, the Vikings were 26th in the NFL in third down conversion rate. A self-study would have revealed the difference in third-down success when targeting the two star receivers.
Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen have been targeted 54 times on third down and they have 32 first downs (59%). When the ball goes to Tyler Conkin or KJ Osborn, they’re 7-for-29.
The Vikings’ defense has to be on the head coach’s mind when he’s begging for more big plays, too. Without Danielle Hunter, they’re not capable of pressuring opposing quarterbacks. They got after Aaron Rodgers just 10 times on 37 drop backs on Sunday. They are now 24th in yards per play allowed, 20th in defensive EPA and 20th in percentage of drives allowing points to the opposition.
Those numbers might get better soon simply by proxy of playing Tim Boyle and whatever sad quarterback plays under Matt Nagy’s grotesque offense but the Vikings have games against Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay and Rodgers still to come. Those games won’t be won by running, playing defense and dinking/dunking.
As teams like the Chiefs and Falcons have shown in the past, there’s only one way to overcome a defense that’s spotty at best: Passing the heck out of the football on offense.
Then there’s the sheer Jefferson factor.
Zimmer has never said directly that Diggs leading the NFL in catches and taking the Bills to the AFC Championship changed his thinking on handling an elite receiver but how could it not? Diggs may have driven them crazy but he was ultimately right. And Zimmer must realize that he can’t allow history to repeat itself with Jefferson. Once is a weird situation. Twice is a trend. He’s acknowledged that his young superstar was “frustrated” by the lack of targets. He couldn’t afford to lose Jefferson’s trust. Sometimes desperation forces ingenuity.
There also must be some part of the Vikings’ head coach that wants to put it all on Cousins’s shoulders. If he’s going down, he’s not going down as the guy who held back the $100 million quarterback. The HC wants it to be clear that if Cousins doesn’t throw it past the sticks, that’s because he chose not to do that, not because he was coached to check to the fullback.
Klint Kubiak joined that train last week when he answered a question about risk/reward of throwing into tight windows by saying, paraphrased: That’s on the QB.
Cousins, of course, has taken every opportunity to deflect questions about pushing the ball downfield. But he’s following orders. His average depth of target the last two weeks has increased from second lowest in the NFL in Weeks 1-9 to the fifth highest in Weeks 10 and 11.
A major part of Zimmer’s credo over the years has also been adaptability. On the defensive side, he’s been a master of adjusting coverages, assignments and rushes based on league trends from year to year. On offense, the increased play-action usage was a modern concept but the offense felt at times like Ed McCaffrey, Rod Smith and Terrell Davis were out there in the pro-set formation. It’s possible the Vikings’ head coach took stock of the league around him and determined that winning like they did in 2017 was the anomaly, not the norm. The No. 1 defense in the NFL this year gave up 41 on Sunday.
Zimmer’s mentor Bill Parcells went through this once upon a time. His Giants teams had destroyed opponents with Lawrence Taylor and a pounding running game in the 80s. When he got to New England, Parcells put the team on the back of his top-pick QB Drew Bledsoe and ranked either No. 1 or 2 in pass attempts in 1994, 1995 and 1996.
The Vikings are currently ninth in pass attempts and 15th in runs.
Does that mean everything is fixed and the Vikings’ offense is the second coming of Culpepper/Moss?
Maybe. But there’s some regression to worry about. Cousins has 11 turnover-worthy plays this year, which is tied for 14th most in the NFL with Matt Ryan and Baker Mayfield. That’s one fewer than Jared Goff. Yet he’s only thrown two interceptions and lost just one fumble. That number doesn’t have to change drastically but the “that’s life” part could be on the way.
Cousins has also only been sacked 14 times, the second fewest of any quarterback with more than 200 attempts. While he has gotten the ball out quickly over the last two weeks, deeper throws are often paired with more time in the pocket.
Even if there are potential drawbacks to Zimmer’s newfound philosophy, the rewards far outweigh the risks in their present situation. Down the stretch, they’ll be battling with teams like the 49ers and Eagles, who have two of the easiest upcoming schedules in the NFL. It might not be enough to go 9-8. The Vikings can’t afford to have games on offense like they did against the Browns, Lions or Cowboys. Taking chances in the direction of two of the league’s best receivers is their best shot to get there and Zimmer is telling the world he’s good with that.
The Vikings’ season has been so wild that nobody could possibly predict what’s next. We can only say that the philosophy fits the personnel and the results are starting to show.
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A+ on the headline here. Also a great piece...
A strength in Cousins game is his accuracy. Cousins should continue to take some chances because of that.