Takeaways from Mike Zimmer's pre-camp Zoom call with TC media
Zimmer talked about his new contract, Dalvin Cook, Everson Griffen and adjusting in a COVID world
*Photo courtesy of the Minnesota Vikings
Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer joined the Twin Cities media on a Zoom call Saturday afternoon to discuss his contract extension and the matters facing the team heading into this week’s opening of camp. Here’s the key takeaways from his 30-minute chat….
Why his contract took so long
Just two weeks ago, Zimmer was reportedly “irked” by his lack of contract extension. Going back to the end of the 2019 regular season, there were rumblings that the team could trade him to Dallas or let him play out his deal. Instead they have locked in Zimmer to a contract that takes him through 2023.
The Vikings’ head coach did insinuate that he would have preferred if things to have progressed faster but said he never felt like he' would be coaching this year without future job security.
“I'm not the most patient guy,” Zimmer said. “It took a while to get started. [Vikings COO] Andrew Miller was new here and he was doing the negotiations with my agent and then we decided to wait after the draft and see how it goes from there. Time gets closer and closer, you get antsy and want to get something done. They did too. They wanted to get something done. We had some hard negotiations there and some of the parts of the contract that took a little longer than we anticipated. There wasn't any time where I didn't feel like it was going to get done. It just took a little bit longer based on some outside things that happened.”
We can only speculate over the nature of disagreement but the length of the contract may have been a sticking point. If the Wilfs initially felt like they wanted to take a wait-and-see approach and have another pressure-cooked, one-year extension, then Zimmer won out by getting them to bend to another long-term deal.
Dalvin Cook’s status
In mid-June, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Dalvin Cook would be holding out of any further team activities as he awaited a new contract. While he does not yet have a deal, Zimmer said that Cook will be showing up at camp.
“I was told he would be,” Zimmer said.
Told by who?
“By him.”
UPDATE: Cook’s agent said that he did not tell the Vikings (or running back’s coach Kennedy Polamalu) that he is going to come to camp even if he doesn’t have a new contract.
After Derrick Henry signed an extension with the Titans, the deal should be pretty straightforward — depending on whether the Vikings want to sign him now considering the salary cap will go down next season.
If Cook fails to show, he will lose an accrued season and become an RFA after next year. That is an outcome he absolutely does not want.
In the past players without extensions like Stefon Diggs and Xavier Rhodes have come to camp and their contracts were finalized shortly after that. Maybe that will be the case with Cook as well. But if camp goes along and he approaches the season without a new contract, who knows what happens.
Most likely scenario: We’re talking to Cook on a Zoom call on the first day players report about his new contract.
Wanting Everson Griffen back
The Vikings have a bunch of different players who could end up rotating into jobs on the defensive line this year. Ifeadi Odenigbo is the presumed starting defensive end across from Danielle Hunter but sub packages are wide open. That is, unless the Vikings bring back Everson Griffen, who is still a free agent.
Griffen announced that he was leaving Minnesota earlier this offseason but it appears he misread the market, believing that he could land another big contract somewhere else. Now there is a bevy of free agent edge rushers on the market, opening the door for the Vikings to re-sign him on the cheap (which is all they can afford since Anthony Harris is playing on the franchise tag.
Zimmer said he’d love to have Griffen back.
“He texted me the other day telling me congratulations and things like that,” Zimmer said. “I’d love to have him back. He’s always been one of my guys, so if that happens that’d be great. I don’t know where that’s at right now.’’
Is this a new era on defense?
If Griffen doesn’t return, we’re going to be looking at a bevy of new starters on defense. It will have the feel of a page turning over in the Zimmer era with staples of his first six years like Griffen, Linval Joseph, Xavier Rhodes and Trae Waynes gone.
But it doesn’t appear that Zimmer is looking at it that way.
“I know everybody is saying how it's big turnover and all that,” Zimmer said. “We have lost some guys, but I think sometimes in these situations you forget about the guys you still have: Danielle Hunters, Pro Bowler, Anthony Barr, Pro Bowler, Eric Kendricks, a Pro Bowler, Harrison Smith, a Pro Bowler. We've got two really good safeties. We've got a good defensive line. We added Michael Pierce. We've got a really good group of linebackers. Obviously the corners are going to be younger, and that's our job to bring them along as fast as we can. That'll be refreshing.”
Zimmer will have his work cut out with the new group of corners, whose jobs are all up in the air heading into camp.
Will the offense be different with Gary Kubiak in charge?
Changes on defense have been discussed much more than on the offensive side but technically speaking there will be a new offensive coordinator for the fifth time since 2014. Not to mention they will be without Stefon Diggs after he was traded to Buffalo.
But the Vikings will be running the same offense with nearly everyone aside from Diggs from the 2019 squad back this year.
“It's not going to change hardly at all. Gary was very, very influential in everything that went about offensively,” Zimmer said. “I know Gary has some ideas that he has put in this offseason but I don't think much difference when you look at our offense or the play calls. I think this is important for us, they're talking about defense we have some turnover but offensively we're a veteran group now. We've added some guys who have helped us but it will look very, very similar. As far as Kirk, him being in the same system for two years, it's all in front of him.”
Zimmer talked at the NFL Combine about the need to have better pass protection. He alluded to that again on Saturday.
“If we can continue to improve on other areas that we need to improve on with some of the protection things and some of the running game things we can all improve on the sky is the limit,” he said.
It will be interesting to see whether the Vikings get creative with the offensive line in order to improve the pass protection. Could Riley Reiff move inside? Could Ezra Cleveland start right away? Could Rashod Hill or Oli Udoh get a chance? We won’t know until those padded practices begin.
Evaluating rookies despite lack of padded practices/preseason games
Speaking of which, one of the biggest challenges faced by coaching staffs this year will be the lack of padded practices and no preseason games. It sounds like Zimmer has a plan.
“We’re going to have to be innovative in the ways we try to evaluate the players,” Zimmer said. “First, we have to try to find out if they know what to do. Then we got to figure out, OK, you know what to do, now show us you know how to do it the way we want you to do it. Those two things are going to be really important moving forward.”
We got a little glimpse into the evaluation thought process from Zimmer on Saturday. He said that upside will rule the day when they make roster decisions.
“We might have to do that with some of the players here, we might have to let a second-year guy go because [while] this guy might not be great in week 1, week 2, week 3, maybe week 7 he’s really going to come up,” Zimmer said. “We’re going to have to look at the long-term picture of all these things.”
The preseason generally means very little toward personnel decisions in the NFL these days but Zimmer said he will miss having hands-off evaluation moments.
“A lot of times in practice the coaches stand back there and ‘move to your left move to your right, do this,’ during preseason games they have to be out there and do it on their own,” Zimmer said. “So we’re to have to get these guys where the coaches aren’t on the field. Figure out how to go play this thing. Understand the game situations. We practice them all the time here with practice but there’s things that come up in games that you can teach the players about even during the course of the game.”
As far as the bubble players go, Zimmer said that an expanded practice squad will mitigate the impact of missing preseason opportunities for third and fourth stringers fighting for jobs.
Going through a very bizarre situation with COVID
Few coaches have the Weird Situation resume that Zimmer can boast. From Adrian Peterson’s suspension to Teddy Bridgewater and Sam Bradford;s injuries to eye surgeries to changes in offensive coordinators and on and on, it’s been a crazy few years. Now in Year 7, he will work around a worldwide pandemic.
“There’s so many things that happen that kind of callous you to whatever happens,” Zimmer said. “Like coach Parcells says all the time, they’re not going to cancel the game so you got to go out and figure out how to win it. That’s kind of what we have to do….Like with all the things with the players, you know, when they get a guy hurt they understand that’s part of the game and they’ll understand if a guy misses two weeks because he tests positive for COVID then somebody has to come in and, again, they’re not going to cancel games so we have to go in and figure out how to win.”
Connecting with players on social justice issues
Zimmer had an important moment this offseason after George Floyd was killed when he told the team that he had their back with social justice measures. The Vikings have numerous active players in the community, a group of whom met with the chief of police in Minneapolis after Floyd’s murder. Zimmer said that the team has not made a decision on kneeling for the anthem, as we have seen many baseball players begin to do this year, but he will be behind the players’ efforts.
“Our guys have been in the forefront of all these things, of trying to create change, of trying to create a better environment for really everyone,” Zimmer said. “They've been able to speak up and talk and communicate with one another, and we're going to continue to do that, as well. We've had several of these calls and several of these virtual meetings on it. As far as the kneeling, and all those things, I think we'll address that another time. We have not really talked about any of those kinds of deals, but we want to do what we can to help. I think everybody understands there needs to be a lot of change made, and I'm all for it."
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Thanks Matthew, very informative. Couple of questions, 1. is Zimmer three year extension three years from now or three extra years starting in 2021? 2. with the Cover rules, couldn't Dalvin opt out, get paid 150K/week and accrue his 4th season making him an UFA next season?