ST. LOUIS – As his Vikings lined up in the victory formation to tick down the final 91 seconds of Sunday's season opener, Mike Zimmer unsuspectingly stood on the sideline with his eyes focused on his starting quarterback.
Zimmer had been waiting a long, long time for this moment.
A respected NFL defensive coordinator for two decades, Zimmer several times was a runner-up for head-coaching positions. After he was passed over by yet another team this past winter, he briefly contemplated blowing off his interview with the Vikings, convinced that they wouldn't hire him either. But he went and they did.
Eight months later, he was watching Matt Cassel take a knee at the end of his team's dominant 34-6 victory — his first win as an NFL head coach — and never saw receiver Cordarrelle Patterson, whose 67-yard touchdown run was the highlight of the game, sneak up from behind and dump the orange Gatorade cooler over his head.
"I told them that I really don't want any more until I win the big one," Zimmer, still soaked, said after the game.
Zimmer was the first to admit that his new-look Vikings have a long, long way to go to get to a Super Bowl. But while Zimmer nitpicked the blowout win over the St. Louis Rams, he did feel a sense of satisfaction — and rightfully so.
His defense gave the Rams' quarterbacks fits and his offense stabilized after some early-game jitters in a wire-to-wire win over a physical Rams team that had legitimate playoff aspirations before losing starting quarterback Sam Bradford during the preseason.
Zimmer was hired in large part for his role in transforming the Cincinnati Bengals into a perennial top-10 defense, and while it remains to be seen just how high the Vikings defense might climb this season under Zimmer, the Vikings certainly didn't look like a team that would finish last in the league in scoring defense for a second straight season.