Vikings coach Mike Zimmer delivers hard punch with 'soft' insult

Mike Zimmer offered a few choice words in critiquing his offensive line following a dreadful performance on Sunday.

Zimmer said his pass blockers didn't block anyone. He said they got overpowered and compared them to a sieve.

Then came a smokin' fastball right between the eyes.

"We were soft," Zimmer grumbled.

"Ouch!" former Vikings linebacker Ben Leber tweeted after reading Zimmer's comments. "Coach used the dreaded word."

Soft.

In football lingo, that's a four-letter word of the worst kind.

NFL players live a macho existence in which weakness is never tolerated. Being tough isn't so much a badge of honor as it is an expectation, a code.

When a coach uses that label — soft — to describe a performance by a player, position group or entire team, the reaction grabs everyone's attention like a vinyl record screeching to a halt on a turntable.

"That cuts to every football player's core," said Leber, now a sideline analyst on Vikings radio broadcasts. "If you have a hard time finding the right motivation for a specific player, your default can just be, 'All right, I'm going to call him soft' and every guy is going to perk up and be like, 'What did you call me? Did you just call me soft?' "

I asked a handful of former NFL players about that particular word and why it carries such weight inside the locker room. Every guy noted the nature of their profession.

"It's a violent game," said Tyrone Carter, a Super Bowl champion. "When you're soft, that's like being slapped."

"Football is such a macho or manly sport," Spaeth said. "Your pride in being a tough guy is as important to us as anything. So when that gets questioned, it hurts."

The old "sticks and stones" expression doesn't apply to NFL players. Not with that word, at least. Just about any criticism or insult is preferable to being called soft.

What's worse for a player, being called dumb or soft?

"Soft," Leber said.

A jerk or soft?

Ok, here's one: Criminal or soft?

(Brief pause.)

"I still think soft," Leber said.

He reasoned that criminal in the football sense — a player prone to dirty tactics — "means you're intimidating," he said.

"A player might stomp on my face or kick me and might get a flag," Leber said, "but he's going to bring it every single play."

Zimmer's sharp rebuke came in the frustration of a lousy performance, but he probably intended to send a message in the process.

"That 100 percent is why he said that," Spaeth theorized. "He's challenging them."

The Vikings have few alternatives at this point, except to hope for improvement from within. They're bumping up against the salary cap and signing another unemployed linemen off his couch won't fix their problems. Trading for a left tackle wouldn't be cheap, either.

This falls squarely on them. Practice this week ought to be a doozy.

"You've got to get that taste out of your mouth," Carter said. "When your head coach is calling you soft or your unit? That's an insult. I know they can't wait to be able to play again and show they're not soft."

Same guys that struggled to contain the Eagles pass rush. Same guys that Zimmer referred to as playing soft.

"If they don't dominate Chicago up front [on Monday night]," Leber said, "it's going to be another long week of practice."

Chip Scoggins • chip.scoggins@startribune.com