Written by Tom Schreier
I’ve put in some extra time, but I didn’t take away from any football time. I maybe worked a few more hours, so as far as preparation, it didn’t take away any time. Just sleep time. — Mike Zimmer at the press conference announcing Adrian Peterson’s indefinite suspension
These days Mike Zimmer looks tired. In fact, he’s probably aged five years since taking over the Minnesota Vikings head coaching job in the offseason. As the days pass he’s starting to look more and more a zombie. Never known for his killer personality — something he says might have kept him from getting a head coaching position sooner — Zimmer looks increasingly drained as the season goes on. The man needs some sleep. Part of it might be the learning curve associated from being a first-time head coach, and part of it might be the team’s 2-5 record, which includes both blowout wins and losses, and a devastating finish against the Buffalo Bills.
“I’ve been in the NFL for 21 years,” Zimmer said at the Peterson press conference. “I’ve seen a lot of things.” He might see more this year than he’s seen in his entire career, however, by the time this season is done.
There’s no way he could have guessed the adversity that he would face this year. Sure, every coach has to deal with off-the-field issues, but Adrian Peterson, his star running back, played only one game all year because of accusations that he abused his four-year-old child. Sure, every coach will have to deal with injury, but losing Brandon Fusco, Kyle Rudolph and Chad Greenway for part or all of the season has been devastating. Sure, players will underperform, but the whole offensive line looks porous and former No. 4 overall pick Matt Kalil, who went to the Pro Bowl in his rookie season, has been pilloried by fans and media alike. “I really don’t listen to media stuff,” says the offensive lineman, “because if I did I probably would have retired by now.”
“You sign up for everything when you become the head coach. You sign up for the good days and the bad days,” said Zimmer during the Peterson press conference. “It’s not my most favorite time, but that’s the way it is.”
There’s no way he could have anticipated all that would happen this season, however, because the Vikings are a different animal. Coaching any football team is tough, and every team will have its fair share of issues, but there’s something else about the Vikings. This team always finds itself in trouble.
Coaching this team has to be like being told to sleep in a haunted mansion overnight in order to inherit a great fortune: There’s a large cash incentive involved with being a head coach in the NFL and, from the outside, coaching a team that has been around since 1961 seems equally luxurious and historic, but once you get in, oh boy. Your new nose tackle gets shot in the calf during a preseason nightclub incident. You start the season without your special teams coach. The next day you wake up and your star running back is out indefinitely. Then two offensive linemen go down on one play…and the leader of your defense misses the teeth of the schedule with multiple injuries…and your up and coming receiver isn’t being himself after a breakout game in Week 1…and on and on and on. It never stops.
In a normal year, having your special teams coach serve a two-game suspension for homophobic comments he made, which surfaced in a Deadspin article written by a former punter, would be considered enough drama for a rookie head coach to handle. In a normal year, having a star wide receiver like Cordarrelle Patterson breakout in the first week and then go silent afterwards would be of the utmost concern. In a normal year, losing your No. 1 deep threat because he was charged with marijuana possession, driving with an open bottle and violating limited license restrictions after he was set to come back from a three-game suspension that came as a result of — wait for it — a DUI arrest in November would be enough to make a coach go bats*** crazy.
But this is not a normal year. This is, however, business as usual for the Vikings.
When the news of Peterson’s arrest came out, people were quick to point out that the Vikings lead the NFL in players arrested since 2000. This the team that became famous for the Love Boat scandal (the waters of Lake Minnetonka are no longer pure, sorry Prince), Onterrio Smith’s Whizzinator and the whole Randy Moss saga — the faux mooning, the bumping of the traffic cop and the lambasting of the caterer. Moss is guy who paid his fines with liquid currency — straight cash homie, in his parlance — and spent the penultimate season of his NFL career wearing three different uniforms.
Welcome to the Minnesota Vikings House of Horrors, Mr. Zimmer. This kind of stuff is routine around these parts.
The craziest thing about all of this is that Zimmer might be the man to reverse the curse. It’s possible that he is able to survive the night, inherit the fortune and turn the haunted mansion into prime real estate. He’s just motivated enough, just passionate enough and, perhaps most importantly, just stubborn enough to pull this off. “I’m pretty hard-headed,” he recently admitted.
This is a guy who isn’t afraid of ghosts or the eyes in the walls or the sound of the house settling. He can handle the national media preying on him when the whole Peterson debacle took place. He’s willing to dole out fines to players that aren’t going to meetings. He’s willing to fly off the handle and tell it how it is. “I’m always going to be pretty honest,” he says with a sinister smile.
The thing about the Vikings job is that it isn’t just one night. He has to get through an entire season, and he doesn’t even get to stay in the mansion just yet. Right now he’s working out of the guest house while Taj Ma Zygi is being built. He will have to ride out the development of Patterson, Kalil and his quarterback, Teddy Bridgewater. He’ll have to put in two years of good work before he can enter the real house of horrors, the spaceship stadium funded by the Minnesota taxpayer and Wario’s deep pockets (Wario is Zygi; Finkel is Einhorn, let’s move on).
“I’m not perfect just like the players aren’t,” says Zimmer. And really, nobody is expecting him or the Vikings to be perfect. In fact, one of the best parts of this team is that they’re human and have made mistakes like all of us throughout the years. The Vikings are haunted, there’s no way around it, but in the short term let’s just hope that Zimmer gets through Halloween without another scare.
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Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3. |