In high-stakes power situations, the whole version of the truth seldom comes out in the moment. Facts get watered down, spun around and polished into a more acceptable version of events.
RandBall: Mike Zimmer story is a reminder to trust your eyes and ears
The Minnesota Star Tribune’s Mark Craig recently sat down with former Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, who gave an honest assessment of several subjects that defined his tenure.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
September 3, 2024 at 2:41PM
Only much later, when the stakeholders have less skin in the game, do we get validation for what we have believed all along.
Another good lesson in this came recently with Minnesota Star Tribune writer Mark Craig’s excellent story on former Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer.
What’s fairly remarkable is Zimmer is still an active coach as the Cowboys’ new defensive coordinator and yet was still willing to discuss so many of the things that were off-the-record rumblings or sanitized truths during his eight seasons with the Vikings.
Patrick Reusse and I talked about the story on Tuesday’s Daily Delivery podcast.
Here are some of the most significant things Zimmer said in clarifying the record to match what many of us could see or sense:
- After a last-second win over the Lions in 2021, former QB Kirk Cousins famously grabbed Zimmer, shoved him and shouted, “You like that?” Zimmer pushed him back. We were told after the game by Cousins that they were just “celebrating” and Zimmer said “it was all good.” But anyone who watched it knew there was tension. KFAN’s Paul Allen said in 2022, after Zimmer had been fired, that the coach had “snapped” in that moment. “Hey, I pushed Kirk back pretty hard, too,” Zimmer said in Craig’s story, which also noted how the relationship between Zimmer and Allen soured after what Allen said.
- At the 2018 NFL scouting combine, just a couple of weeks before the Vikings signed Cousins, Zimmer said this in a session with local reporters: “I want to be really careful about taking away from our strength and saying, ‘OK, we’re not going to be able to do this and we’re not going to be able to do that anymore because of financial reasons or something else.’” That was the groundwork for what became obvious: Signing Cousins was the beginning of the end for Zimmer, even though he lasted four more seasons and had to grudgingly say nice things about Cousins during that time. How did he really feel? “We’re averaging 10 wins a year playing really good defense with some other quarterbacks who weren’t as talented as Kirk,” Zimmer told Craig. “Then we paid Kirk a lot of money and ended up having to get rid of some guys on defense and weren’t able to get ones we needed.”
- A good deal of the tension at the end of the Zimmer and Rick Spielman regime was detailed in Ben Goessling’s excellent story from January 2022. But some of the specifics in Craig’s story, including the impact of the 2021 draft on the coach-GM relationship, revealed a fracture that was only hinted at before even if it was plain to see. Per the story, the two barely talked during that final season and haven’t spoken since. “The first round, Rick tried to trade up for Justin Fields, who hasn’t done anything,” Zimmer said. “When he picked [Kellen] Mond, I walked out of the room. I left the building. I didn’t even talk to him on the phone.”
I don’t think Zimmer comes off looking very good throughout the story, though I thought his side came across better the second time I read it. In the end, he’s bitter — justifiably in some ways, less so in others — and his main bit of self-reflection seems to be that he knows he’s someone who holds a grudge.
We probably knew that before the story came out, too, but one more unvarnished interview with Zimmer sure did clarify the record.
In the offseason, the Vikings went after defensive reinforcements as soon as they could. A deeper defense has allowed the third-fewest points in the NFL through two games.
