Coach Zimmer

The hills on the Zimmer Ridge Ranch make its 157 acres seem twice that. Like the team he coaches, the foliage on its ridges and valleys may look scattered and raw, but it’s all part of Zimmer’s plan. He has planted chestnut and hazelnut trees, and placed blackberry bushes at their ankles. There’s a vast soybean field that he lets a neighbor harvest and a stack of gooey beehives on the edge of the property, where locals are free to gather honey. Zimmer has carpeted the land with a carefully chosen, native warm-season grasses. The sum of it all makes this a perfect home for wild deer, turkeys, quail, ducks and geese. “[But] I don’t shoot anything on the property,” Zimmer explains. “I’m more into seeing how good I can make it for the animals.”

It all contradicts the fiery, pinch-faced Bengals coordinator who stole the show on the 2009 and ’13 seasons of HBO’s Hard Knocks with his blue language directed at players who fell short of his standard. It’s hard to reconcile the thoughtful and sensitive architect of Zimmer Ridge Ranch with the winning-obsessed madman who was back on the Bengals’ sideline coaching just three days after Vikki died, without warning, of natural causes at age 50.

“I’ve never met anyone who’s as obsessed with football as he is,” says Vikings Pro Bowl linebacker Anthony Barr. “But as hard-nosed and aggressive as he is, there’s a side of him that’s patient, calm. You can sit down and talk with him. It might not be the most comfortable [conversation], but if you step out of your comfort zone and build that relationship, you’re rewarded.”

“I hope the story you’re writing won’t be too long,” Zimmer says. “I promise I’m not that interesting.”

If that were true, though, Deion Sanders would not call as often as he does, now 18 years after they last worked together in Dallas. “Zim was more than a coach to me,” Sanders says. “He was a friend, a mentor. Mike Zimmer is a truth teller, a realist.”

To listen to the men who have worked with Zimmer is to believe that this country music fan with one good eye (and “no ass,” according to Vikings cornerback Terence Newman, who says, “I don’t know how his jeans stay up”) has a better rapport with his largely twentysomething, mostly African-American roster than any coach in the league.

“I’m not gonna say he’s a players’ coach, because he hates that,” says Minnesota safety Harrison Smith. “Other coaches, the way they talk to players, it’s just not ... real. Nothing about [Zimmer] is fabricated, nothing’s fake.”

“I didn’t know Mike when I went to Dallas,” says Bill Parcells, who took over the Cowboys five years after Switzer resigned. But Parcells soon saw that his new defensive coordinator “was passionate, committed. He was a tireless worker. Cared about players. I inherited some people who weren’t like that. But Mike was a guy I gravitated to.”

“It’s like he grew up in the inner city, man,” says Sanders. “He relates to everyone. And he’s intelligent. What Zim said was going to happen in a game, it happened. When your best players see that and start buying in, then everybody follows.”