Jan. 4—This football game that the Minnesota Vikings played Sunday night: My thoughts as I watched it were that after 15 previous regular season games, the 16th was clear evidence that the team had checked out.
It’s been a very tough year. The Vikings competed in a dozen one-score games before Sunday’s one-sided and drama-less 37-10 loss to Green Bay played out. They relegated their fans to a literal roller-coaster along the way, winning games in the last-second, losing games in the last-second. They could not finish. On Sunday, they couldn’t start.
It would be easy to say that all the intangibles went against Minnesota on Sunday. Quarterback Kirk Cousins had to miss the game to go on the Covid list. They had injuries to key personnel: Adam Thielen, for instance. They had to play the game in Green Bay, one of the toughest places to win in the NFL. They had to go against Packers all-world quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who is probably going to win the MVP Award. And the Packers were highly motivated, assured of home field advantage throughout the playoffs if only they could defeat their arch enemies.
Well, that was easy. The Vikings, under reserve quarterback Sean Mannion, were out-gained 299 yards to 70 in the first half, where it steadily became apparent that they were incapable of making a real game of it. Dalvin Cook, Minnesota’s outstanding running back, finished with just 13 yards on nine carries.
The look of defeatism was everywhere, Until now, the Vikings were at least an entertaining team. They moved the football very well in most of their games, and the defense — though it struggled routinely in the second half — came up with a lot of exciting plays.
But on Sunday night, you could look in the faces of almost every Viking and feel they were just going through the motions, relieved that the end of their nightmare season was close at hand. Head coach Mike Zimmer, who many believe will be fired soon, looked as if he had already become resigned to reaching the end of his tenure. The demoralized look is a look that we’re not used to seeing on Zimmer’s face. But it was there.
Vikings fans, who are not known for their patience, weighed in with their usual frustration. One of them wrote online that the team had “no determination, no drive.” Losing, he said, is bad enough. To see that the team doesn’t care any more is too much to swallow.
The Vikings, 7-9, have one more game remaining against the equally disappointing Chicago Bears. Does it really matter which team wins?
No. Probably not. The real intrigue comes later, when we wait to see if Zimmer gets the boot, and when we wait to see if the Vikings draft a quarterback to replace Cousins, who many fans consider a good stat padder but not a real winner.
My colleague, the ever-wise Scott Mansch, wrote recently that the Vikings might want to think twice before firing Zimmer. He may have something there.
Firing one coach doesn’t guarantee that things will become better. I remember when the Detroit Lions fired one of the league’s most respected coaches a few years ago, Mike Caldwell, because they weren’t pleased with back-to-back 9-7 records and they said it will take another coach to “get the team over the hump.”
So they replaced him with Matt Patricia, who was a disaster. Nobody liked Patricia, and least of all his players, who refused to buy into his system. The team regressed until last season, when they fired him and allowed many of their best players, including quarterback Matt Stafford, to leave the team for better landing spots. They’ve got a new coach now, and a 2-13-1 record.
Zimmer owns a 71-56-1 record for his tenure with the Vikings. This is the first year under his leadership that the team has missed the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.
I’m not saying that the Vikings should keep Zimmer. I’m just saying that if they do fire him, they’d better be careful who they replace him with.