Mike Zimmer is just fine with just coaching

MANKATO – Mike Zimmer is a Bill Parcells guy. But only to a certain point. And that point stops comfortably short of wanting to add general manager to his head coaching title.

Parcells, of course, is the Hall of Fame coach who famously once said, "If I'm going to be asked to cook the meal, I'd like to be able to pick the groceries." Zimmer, the Vikings coach whose career was impacted greatly by Parcells in Dallas, trusts final say on his grocery list to Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman.

"I sit and I watch all the things Rick does, and there's no way I could be a general manager and head coach," Zimmer said last week when his contract extension was announced. "It's just not me. I just want to coach football. And Rick does so many other things."

A few days later, Spielman was asked about the process that goes into shopping for those so-called groceries and whether he could envision the 60-year-old Zimmer changing his mind and wanting Spielman's cap, too, and the final say that goes with it.

"Oh, no," Spielman said. "I can tell. He doesn't want to be a GM. He said it, and when Zim says something, it's pretty open, honest and sincere. There's no hidden agendas when Zim speaks."

That's not to suggest Zimmer isn't an active, vocal and straight-shooting participant in making up the grocery list. In fact, believe it or not, people on the same team argue occasionally. Yeah, we know. That never happens in the real world, eh?

"We'll have our disagreements," Spielman said. "Everybody does. But as a GM-head coaching relationship, I can go into his office and tell him, 'This is what I'm thinking. This is the direction we're going to go.' And we can talk back and forth. I can disagree with him, and we'll go through it numerous times.

Naturally, relationships are strengthened when one side [Spielman] handpicks the other side [Zimmer] after a thorough search and interview process. It also helps, of course, that the two of them are seeing quick results, having taken a five-win team to an 11-win division title in two seasons.

But unlike 2010, when the Vikings were coming off a division title, or 2013, when the Vikings were a returning playoff team, the team's current success seems sustainable, foundational. That's why Spielman went to ownership and recommended Zimmer's contract, which was to run through 2017, be extended.

"I just felt it was the right time," Spielman said. "No question in my mind that the way he coaches and the direction he has us heading that this is the guy who's going to carry us into the future."

When the Vikings are in training camp, the team's scouts sit in on the coaches meetings. The purpose is to further strengthen the scouts' ability to identify specific player traits needed on this team. That vision is further unified, Spielman said, by his kinship with Zimmer as a Midwestern guy who was shaped as a son of a hard-nosed high school coach.

"We have the same philosophies, the same beliefs in how to build a football team, the same beliefs in the types of players we want in here," Spielman said. "I think it's growing up very similarly. Just that same type of mentality.

Spielman has joked that Zimmer can be as blunt as a hammer to the head. But that's OK, he says, because he and his younger brother, Chris, were raised on hammers to the head from their dad, Sonny.

"There have been times when Zim and I have totally disagreed," Spielman said. "One time, he walked out of my office all mad about something."

And?

"Ten minutes later, I was in his office," Spielman said. "We were talking about something else."