Primarily based on the dearth of trades, total inactivity of participant motion, and extension of present personnel, the Minnesota Vikings are banking on one factor because the perpetrator for latest mediocrity.
Mike Zimmer.
If the brand new management mixture of Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O’Connell arrived on the scene and commenced uprooting gamers, the analysis could be totally different.
However it isn’t.
The Vikings haven’t traded anyone in an offseason the place some followers believed the group would bear a full structural rebuild. The Vikings did the other, recommitting to the prevailing nucleus of stars whereas vocally sustaining the expectation for the playoffs in 2022.
As a result of Adofo-Mensah relented taking a cleaver to the roster — and primarily based on the mentality the workforce needs to win subsequent season — with out declaration, the group is actually blaming Zimmer for the woes of 2020 and 2021.
In these two seasons, the Vikings tallied a 15-18 (.455) document, the Twentieth-best within the NFL. Earlier than that, from 2014 to 2019 on Zimmer’s watch, Minnesota gained 59.9% off all video games, the seventh-best leaguewide.
So, Zimmer’s Vikings went from seventh-best to Thirteenth-worst in two years. The Vikings possession and new common administration are banking on Kevin O’Connell’s wherewithal to emulate the 2014-2019 observe document. In any other case, a fireplace sale of gamers would’ve been on the docket.
To an extent, the motto checks out. The Vikings collapsed at essential moments of video games in 2021 — primarily on protection — surrendering essentially the most factors within the ultimate two minutes of halves in NFL historical past. The primary-half tendency was so nauseating it induced revisionist historical past like this:
And that stat, from the week earlier than the ultimate sport, would’ve resulted in a 13-4 document if the celebs aligned in another way.
Ergo, if the Vikings may discover a coach who didn’t creator end-of-half collapses, maybe the enterprise isn’t too removed from Tremendous Bowl contendership. The top coach is primarily accountable for such failures, so he received the ax, and the brand new man took over.
Plain and easy — Zimmer’s downfall must be the reason for the Vikings latest stay-put philosophy. Somebody within the group — or a number of people — did an post-mortem of the 2021 marketing campaign and decided the reason for loss of life was Mike Zimmer.
This verdict crystallized when Kirk Cousins was prolonged for an additional 12 months at a good-looking $35 million price ticket. Had Cousins been traded to the Cleveland Browns, Pittsburgh Steelers, or elsewhere, the white flag could be seen, signaling a shift in a special path.
After all, that didn’t happen, and the Vikings will enter the 2022 common season with the easy assumption Zimmer was public enemy #1 for mediocrity.
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the College of Minnesota in 2007. His YouTube Channel, VikesNow, debuts in March 2022. He hosts a podcast with Bryant McKinnie, which airs each Wednesday with Raun Sawh and Sally from Minneapolis. His Viking fandom dates again to 1996. Listed responsible pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ and The Doorways (the band).
