Written By Sam Ekstrom
On Monday, the Vikings players cleaned out their lockers and conducted de facto exit interviews with the local media. On Tuesday, Mike Zimmer took questions for half an hour on the state of his team and his first season as an NFL head coach. This is how the team summarized the season in their own words.
The first-year coach
HC Mike Zimmer: “Honestly, I never felt overwhelmed, from the day I walked in … I was really lucky to walk into a place like this that has such good support group. The people upstairs, the ownership … They’ve helped me so many different ways, and I was fortunate to have really good people that I could lean on like Norv Turner, who’s been through this quite a bit of times. Are there some things that I would do differently? Sure. Did I make some mistakes? Sure. But I felt like each and every day I came into work that I gave this team, the fans and the organization the very best that I could give them.”
S Harrison Smith: “He's obviously got us headed in the right direction. He's set a completely different tone around here of just being professionals, playing aggressive football, playing tough, disciplined football, everybody doing their job. Like I said, we're not there yet, but he's got us going there.”
LB Gerald Hodges: “He's a tough, tough, tough, tough coach, but he's a great coach. He's just solid. He's a solid guy. He's more than just football. His morals is manly morals. That's great about him.”
CB Captain Munnerlyn: “Everybody I talked to, they always said, 'Man, Coach Zim, he's a tough coach.’ He's going to get on you. He's going to make you work, and he's a great defensive-minded coach. I knew that before I signed here. He definitely was tough on me this year, but I loved it.”
Zimmer: “One of the things that I wanted to try and do when I came here was to try and change the culture as much as I possibly could. In a lot of ways it’s moving in that direction as far as developing the mindset, it’s developing the mental toughness, all the things really that I said in the first press conference I ever had. I don’t believe we’re there yet, I believe there’s still a lot of preaching, a lot of sweat and pushing that I have to make sure I continue to do.”
The rookie quarterback
Zimmer: “We obviously thought we had Adrian, and we thought the offensive line was in a pretty good spot. The quarterback was the key for the offense, and I was trying to improve the defense. I think we’re fortunate to the fact that we learned an awful lot about Teddy this year with the progress that he’s made. But he’s still got to get a lot better to get to where we want to go. He’s got to improve in the offseason and things like that.”
LB Chad Greenway: “Having success like he did this year, his rookie year, where really he was thrown into the situation, really makes him even better. Had he sat here and maybe played a couple games here or there in spot duty and did OK, it wouldn't maybe be the same feeling, but the way he handled the situation he was thrown into really says a lot about him, says a lot about our team, our staff, the way they handled it.”
WR Jarius Wright: “Words really can't explain how much he's matured. You see the play from him the past five games – five or six games — how he's gotten better. His composure all year has been great. … Knowing that Teddy is that guy, and that's who we decided to go with, that's what we were going to go with, it definitely gives us a lot of confidence, knowing he's going to be that day-to-day guy.”
WR Cordarrelle Patterson: “Wherever Teddy goes [this offseason], I feel like I'm going to go where he goes for a couple weeks. Just trying to get on the same page with each other.”
Zimmer: “Teddy is the quarterback. There's no doubt in my mind he's the quarterback to run this team."
Failing to meet expectations
DE Brian Robison: “We made big-time strides, but like I said, we're not satisfied with it. We're not happy with being the number 14th-ranked defense. We want to be that top-10, we want to be that top-five mold type of defense. If we can get up there, we won't be satisfied with that; we're going to want to be number one, so we've got to go into this offseason, work really hard, everybody come back in shape and then be able to put it on tape when we get back.”
Munnerlyn: “I'm below my expectation. On the field I feel like I didn't play well at all. I feel like it was one of my worst years of football.”
Smith: “A little inconsistent. There's also a mindset where you look back on it and think, 'I could have made that play.'"
Patterson: “It wasn't the year I thought it was going to be. It was a bad year for me, so this offseason is going to be a challenge for me."
QB Teddy Bridgewater: “We didn't meet our goals. We don't want to be satisfied with winning seven games. Around here, the expectation level is pretty high. We want to be playoff team. Next year around this time, we don't want to be cleaning out our lockers and booking flights and heading out. We want to be getting ready to either play a Wild Card game or sitting at home with home-field advantage. We didn't meet our goals.”
Munnerlyn: “At the end of the day we're not satisfied with just being 7-9. We want to be in the postseason right now, trying to make that run for the Super Bowl.”
Zimmer: “There was some good things that happened during the course of the year but not enough good things. We didn't finish where we needed to finish.”
Zimmer on Peterson
Zimmer: “Well, as I’ve said many, many times, Adrian was always great with me. I think he’s a good person. I think obviously he’s a great running back and if it works out that way and things work out and he gets his life in order – that’s the most important thing; he gets his life in order, he gets the opportunity to come back – then I will be in his corner whatever the decision is made.
“Our hands our partly tied with the NFL and the timeframe that they give us. But also it’s partly up to Adrian and make sure he’s doing what he has to do in order to get back reinstated off the suspension. So those are all factors that we have to factor in, but we would love to know ASAP just so that we can start going because a guy like him, your football team and your offense can be different (if) you have him and you don’t have him.
“I’m sure that he’s going to be in shape and all those things. Again, I can only go on what I saw from him and how he was with me. When I first got the job, one of the things that I wanted to make sure I did was to develop a relationship with Adrian to try cultivate him into working with me in this program. I felt like over the short period of time that we were together that we had done that, so I really like the kid. I hope what’s best for him.”
Farewells?
LB Jasper Brinkley: “We'll see how it goes. We'll see where the wind blows. Hopefully it's back here again because I have a lot of ties to this place. It's where I was drafted as a rookie. Played a fair amount of football here.”
Greenway: “I won't talk too much about the future, what's going to happen, until we know. It's hard to be in a situation where you're watching. I've never done that, and I don't really plan on it. I'm going to go somewhere where I'm going to compete to play. I think that if you had to go somewhere else, if you're in a position where you had to go somewhere else, there's a combination of those two things: where are you going to play and have success, obviously. I want to do that here.
“[Family] plays a big role. My daughters are big Vikings fans. It'd be a change if that happened, but we make every decision based on our family. We won't change for this decision. It simply won't come down to money or business or anything. It'll come down to what's best for the family. We'll stay consistent with those decisions.”
QB Christian Ponder: “I learned to deal with adversity. I feel that I've matured a lot the past four years. I feel like I've grown up as a man and grown as a football player. Adversity's tough, but you've got to be thankful for it if it helps you out. It has been helpful. It will help me in the long run in my football career and being a father and husband. I'll remember all these times.”
Optimism for Year 2 of Zimmer and Turner
Bridgewater: “We have a better understanding of what Coach Turner's trying to do with the system. It's going to be a unique thing being able to play your second year with him after playing just 12 games and seeing how good it could be. I think we're going to be a more aggressive team. We had some success this year in the no huddle. It'll be pretty exciting to see where we head next season.”
Robison: “You get more comfortable with it. The fact of the matter is we were all learning a new system around here, so some of us have been in that scheme — myself, almost eight years — then you've got other guys in Everson who's been here four years, that's all they've known. When you get a new scheme there's a little bit of a learning curve. I think next year there's going to be more familiarity with it. Hopefully we'll be more comfortable and make more plays.
Smith: “I'm pretty excited about [next year], because I know just personally — not that it's overly complicated or anything — it's just being familiar with things the second time around should make things run smoother as long as we're putting in the work and trying to get better, but we don't have to learn new verbiage and stuff like that.”
Munnerlyn: “I definitely feel like there's some light at the end of the tunnel. These guys have overcome a lot this year, on and off the field. A lot of situations that we got put in. We've overcome a lot. We kept fighting, we kept scratching. These guys in this locker room are very special. This group of men here, they came in here each and every day and they fought. They gave us their all. That's the key on the football team, it's like a brotherhood. We just came out here and we fought together and we got some wins.”
Wright: “Our expectations are very high. Like I said, we know what we're capable of doing, and we've showed it the past five games, even though we wasn't able to win them all, we showed signs of being a good team.”
Zimmer: “That’s really why you play; to go to the playoffs and have a chance to win the Super Bowl.”
Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket and a play-by-play broadcaster in Burnsville, Minn. Hear him on 105 The Ticket Sunday mornings from 8-10 a.m. on “The Wake Up Call.” Follow him on Twitter @SamEkstrom for further insights.