What will become of Mike Zimmer?

I had to Google Greg Blue...

Fair enough. I guess that's where I'm different. I do emotionally invest in people. Surprise there, huh? Moss, Carter, Green, Winfield, Allen, Robison, Griffen, Bridgewater, Thielen, Zimmer, Cook, Smith, etc. - there are just certain guys who are important pieces of my fandom. If I didn't invest in certain players and coaches, I'm not sure I would enjoy rooting for the Vikings as much. But maybe that's just me. Of course I don't love everyone on the team, but I always have a few who keep me a little more invested.

IMO Zimmer was very clearly being used as a scapegoat by some. In fact I would argue many are still doing so in order to make themselves feel better about our current team. I think if you want to believe Kirk is what a few Vikings fans think he is as opposed to what 90% of media and general public outside that think, you need excuses for how things played out. If Kirk is really that good then it must be someone's fault our team has gone downhill since he got here.

Zimmer got us to the NFC Championship game after a chunk of pretty bad years. We finally seemed to have some stability and were having much more success with him as coach. Cousins and that contract was brought in (seemingly against Zimmers wishes) and the team fell off big time over the next 4 seasons. Kirk also had his history with Washington pointing to his own limited ability and also the same when it comes to team success.

We had many different offensive coordinators and schemes since he got here. Kirk has worked with Mccvay and Shanahan (not to mention Stefanski/Shurmur/Kubiak). I don't think every single one of these coordinators and coaches has been the problem. No matter how much people want to blame Zimmer it doesn't really matter who the coach has been the results will be mediocre with Cousins. We loaded up on offense using a ton of available resources and let the defense fall off. The offense despite all of this has still a largely been mediocre so none of it really paid off at all on that side (while defense took a major hit to invest how we did).

I don't have any issues with Zimmer and wish him the best. I think it's unfortunate he got stuck with a situation he didn't want and then was blamed for that situation not working out when it was largely to be expected/probably why he didn't want it in the first place. Somehow people go way over the top at Zimmer while ignoring the context of how it all played out though.