Post by Longship on Dec 7, 2021 13:24:33 GMT -6
But I can ask you how many other head coaches in the NFL are, like Zimmer, in their 8th year with their team (or 7th, or 6th) despite never getting anywhere near a Super Bowl.
Then I can ask you how many head coaches hired in the 21st century have taken 8 years or more to get to their first Super Bowl.
And when you have the answers, I'll ask why in the hell Zimmer's continued employment would make any more sense than it does now.
Zimmer had already been getting passes going back to the end of the 2018 season.
He was given what was supposed to be the final piece to the puzzle with Cousins, and responded with 8 wins. At that point he'd had 5 tries, and that's pretty much all it takes in the 21st century NFL. You either get to a Super Bowl or you don't. He didn't.
The Wilfs apparently have limited awareness of where their GM & HC stand relative to the rest of the NFL, and it's not often that a head coach or GM lose their job after a even a first round playoff win. So it's easy to see why the Wilfs fell for the idea that the 2019 season's wildcard win should buy Spielman and Zimmer another year. But it was the Spielman/Zimmer extensions that exposed either the Wilfs' astonishing ignorance of how the NFL works, or a total disregard for the idea of competing at a higher level than a playoff appearance every other year.
But retaining Spielman & Zimmer after the failed 2020 campaign was the decision with which the Wilfs went from underachieving owners to utterly negligent ones. EVERY team in the NFL had to deal with COVID. And despite what many Vikings fans & media apologists believe, injuries did NOT hinder the 2020 Vikes to a greater degree than the league average, according to analysis by Football Outsiders, PFF, Man Games Lost.com, and others.
As to whether to fire Zimmer and Spielman now vs after the season, it shouldn't make any difference with smarter ownership. But the Vikings currently have about a 1 in 4 chance of giving the Wilfs an excuse to p!ss away another year by sneaking into a wildcard game and setting up another ' We're so close! When we get Hunter and Pierce and Barr back and pick up a couple of nice pieces in FA and the draft...' failure in 2022.
The tenures of Spielman and Zimmer have outlasted what their accomplishments have warranted, and it's past time to move on.
... and neither is this Chris guy.