Coach Zimmer

Avid outdoorsman Mike Zimmer long wanted a place of his own to hunt. But the volatile nature of the coaching profession kept holding him back -- until he bought into a piece of advice from his wife, Vikki.

"I would always say I'd like to do something [buy property], but we might not be here next year or we might get a new job, we might get fired," Zimmer said. "She used to always tell me that you can't live life that way, worrying about what's next. You can't worry about it."

Zimmer bought his first 40 acres in the rolling Northern Kentucky countryside, 27 minutes south of Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, in September 2013, when he was the Bengals' defensive coordinator. It meant no more arranging trips on Friday afternoons in the offseason to use someone else's land.

Four months later, he got his first shot as a head coach with the Minnesota Vikings.

"I'm probably the dumbest person around to build a house 12 hours from where I work, but I really liked the property and I said, 'What the hell, I'll just build a house on it,'" said Zimmer, who is going into his sixth season with the Vikings.

Zimmer, 63, eventually expanded his plot to 160 acres, calling it Zimmer Ridge Ranch, with a five-bedroom, six-bathroom home totaling more than 8,000 square feet. If Vikki taught him anything, it's that nothing is promised -- from job security to life. Sometimes you just have to make the jump and not look back.

Vikki, his wife of 29 years, never got to see Zimmer Ridge Ranch. She died unexpectedly of natural causes at the age of 50 on Oct. 8, 2009.

Much of the design is based on the Dallas house where he and Vikki raised their three children. That, Vikki's daughter Corri recalls, was her mother's dream home.

"She would have loved this place," Zimmer said.

Here, 700 miles away from his daily grind in Minnesota, even a man who idles with the worst of them is able to find solace. This place breeds patience and brings out a calm in Zimmer, allowing him to recharge before facing arguably the most pivotal season of his career.

The downtime at Zimmer Ridge Ranch breathes life into his professional and personal life, but there's only so much vacation mode he can take. "Offseason coach" is slowly waning away and being replaced by in-season Zim.

"This year I feel like I guess I've got the itch because when people are saying things about you that you don't believe are true, you want to prove them wrong," Zimmer said. "I want to prove some people wrong."

After the Vikings no-showed in a Week 17 loss at home to the Bears, putting themselves out of contention for the playoffs, rumors began to swirl about Zimmer's future in Minnesota. It wasn't the speculation about being fired that bothered him most -- though that's always been in the back of his mind, despite it never happening during his career. It was the gossip that spread after the loss that he might quit.

With the daunting task of another season fast approaching, Zimmer is at peace with his career and his place in life.

"People get fired a lot in this business and .... [long pause] ... I know a lot of the fans probably don't think this, but I have a pretty good reputation throughout the league and I don't worry about it as much," Zimmer said. "I don't want to get fired, I want to coach the Vikings for the rest of my life if I can, but -- and if I did get fired, I don't know if I'd coach anymore or not -- but I know I've had people call me and say, 'If anything ever happens, I'll hire you in a minute.' So, I'm not afraid of not being able to get a job, if that's what I want to do, and maybe somebody would want me as a head coach again. I don't know.

"There was a lot of talk after the season about this might happen and all this stuff. That bothered me. So I guess ... if [ownership] thinks one of these guys are better than me, fine. But I think I've had a decent track record of what I've done but I'm not going to beg anybody. That's just not who I am."