Mike Zimmer on halting Vikings' slide: 'It's been a long, long, long month'

The Vikings today won their first game since Oct. 9, snapping a four-game losing streak by beating the Cardinals, 30-24, at U.S. Bank Stadium.

"It's been a long month," coach Mike Zimmer said. "It's been a long, long, long month. But it's good to feel this again. It's good to see the fight that the players had and the hard work. I talked to the team a lot the past few days about how it's a long season and there's going to be ups and downs. There's going to be a lot of different things going on. Just keep fighting."

It was actually the team's first win in six weeks. But who's counting?

Specially, Zimmer was pleased with his pass rush and with his offensive line for weathering the storm against one of the NFL's best defenses. He noted that it was a team win, with touchdowns in all three phases.

"It was a good to get a win," Zimmer said. "I thought we played hard and fought to the end. We obviously made some mistakes at the end of the ball game but it was nice that we had scores in all three phases of the game. The interception by Xavier, I thought, was a real momentum-changer."

That 100-yard interception return for a touchdown by Xavier Rhodes and the 104-yard kickoff return for a score by Cordarrelle Patterson gave them two plays of 100-plus yards in a game for the first time in team history.

"Our message this week was make the sound plays first and let the big plays come to you," he said. "Do your job first and we'll see what happens."

The end result was a huge win for a Vikings team that had been in a freefall.

"There's a lot of negativity when you lose four games [in a row]," the coach said. "It's actually a credit to our football team that we didn't let it seep in to us because it could have gone south really fast."