What if it really was all Zimmer's fault?

Like Power said, all 3 are to blame.

Zimmer was still coaxing entire halves of good to really good Defense out of a Roster that had no depth. But his stubborn ass Run First/Protect the Lead/Prevent D at the end of halves only works if you have a dominant trait, be it Pass Rush, Rushing Attack or whatever.

And really, who lately has won it all with a Run Fist approach? Not the Titans. Not the Ravens. The only reason the 9ers have come close is because they have a dominant Front 7 and Shanahan is a great play designer and playcaller.

It was a dinosaur approach. Handicapped by Spielman's idiotic mid-round trades just to satisfy his equally idiotic notion that he needed double digit picks every single Draft.

A few years back I cross referenced a bunch of Drafts and built an entire Offensive Line out of guys that were available when Slick decided to trade down in Rounds 3-5. You know, the part of the Draft where every good Team in the NFL builds their IOL. And when he did stay put he picked busts.

To address that massive problem he pivoted to spending all high Round picks. A 1st, 2nd and two 3rds later he still didn't get it right, forcing his successor to spend another 2nd. And Kwesi will need to spend another pick to replace Bradbury next year.

That's horrendous asset management. There's no way to deny it. And that meant far less attention to the depth on Defense, which was nonexistent the last two years.

The erosion of depth made the Defense vulnerable to injuries. And they happened as the core keeps getting older without getting replenished.

That core, when healthy, can still be pretty good. Especially with a better scheme. Hunter is a Top 5 Pass Rusher who's also pretty good against the run. Kendricks had a down year but should bounce back to Top 5 ILB play. Harrson Smith was actually pretty damn good last year playing with a lot of crap in the Secondary. He's still Top 5.

It was Cornerback Room that also doomed Rick. After Rhodes/Waynes/Alexander he whiffed on Hughes and Gladney. And you could argue he whiffed on Waynes and Alexander too since he didn't extend them.

Zimmer's uber-complicated mirroring technique takes a zillion years to learn, that's his fault. Rick couldn't rebuild the Cornerback Room. That's his fault. Free Agency didn't fix it either.

But there's still Difference Makers at all 3 Levels of the Defense.

And on Offense they have consistently had one of the deadliest 2 Receiver combos for years now. And a generally good rushing attack. With a Tier 2 QB. Even with a Below Average Line that and the playmakers on Defense are going to keep you around League Average every year with the chance for more depending on health.

The Wilfs missed that the depth was gone and there were no reinforcements on the way for the Players on Defense. That's their fault. But I do believe that they will be much more involved going forward. Maybe a lot more through Miller, but still more involved generally than just showing up for games and FA wine and dines as mentioned above.

The real problem is that they don't recognize the limitations of Kirk 'I go where the read takes me' Cousins. He can't win a Superbowl unless he's got the 2018 Rams or 2019 9ers Roster around him. The cupboard is still too bare, no matter what Kwesi does. It could never be restocked in a single offseason.

There's only 2 legit Pass Rushers on the Defense. And they're both coming off of significant injuries. Despite all the Draft Capital the IOL still stinks at Pass Pro. Thielen, Kendricks, and Smith are aging and the depth behind them is either mostly or wholly untested.

Having said that there is still some legitimate reason for optimism. Just with a realistic ceiling. The IOL will improve. Cleveland will be better in Pass Pro. Some of Bradbury's warts will be covered up. Whomever wins the RG competition will provide League Average Pass Protection, which is 50% better than anything Minnesota has gotten in years.

O'Connell will be calling the 21st Century version of the Shanahan/Kubiak Offense. The stunning lack of motion, minimal use of 11 Personnel Formations, the horrific success rate on 2nd and long and 3rd and short runs will improve via more intelligent play designs, as well as simply being in those situations less. Midwinter already pointed out that the checkdown game will be significantly more sophisticated, which will limit some of Kirk's conservative nature.

This should be a Top 7 or 8 Offense. They will still struggle against stout Defensive Lines. And they really need KJ to continue to improve while also getting some contributions from ISM or Nailor. But other than a massive slew of injuries this should be a good to very good Offense.

The Defense will be better too, as long as they are healthy. Hunter and Smith will be tough to gameplan around. Especially if a 3rd Rusher develops and Z can start to Rover around like he did in Green Bay. The Run Defense should be better if Phillips and Hicks are who they've been recently and stay healthy. Cene and Bynum and Booth will actually help with the Run D too. All are aggressive hitters. I expect a lot of 3 Safety looks in Nickel this year.

The Corners are improved(ish). Breeland and Mac were amongst the worst in the League last year. Dantzler and Sullivan should, pretty please, be better. I expect Booth to get roughly a third of the Outside Corner snaps this year and I'm sky high on him.

I also like the scheme change. Lends itself to more looks to confuse the QB and is great at looking like one Shell pre-snap and a different one post-snap. That helps slow the QBs read a tick, helping both the Pass Rush AND the CBs.

But the second there are injuries this will go from a Top 18-21 range Defense (or better) to Bottom 5 if enough of them rack up. There is zero depth at Edge. If Kendricks or Hicks goes down it's a baptism by fire for Asamoah or back to freaking Blake Lynch again. If Dantzler and Booth are hurt at the same time Boyd will be on the field. Which gives me nightmares. If Harry goes down for any length of time the Vikings will have likely the least experienced Secondary on the Field in the entire NFL.

There's just no depth. And Cousins isn't enough of a killer to elevate the Offense to compensate when injuries force the Defense to start leaking oil.

I'm not mentioning improvement via Zimmer being a horrible game manager. I don't expect O'Connell to chase 2 point conversions too early, try to sit on leads, use his Time Outs poorly or stick to the rushing attack for way too long when it just isn't clicking. But I can't project that since he's never been a Head Coach before.

IF healthy, and O'Connell is an average HC at the parts Zimmer sucked out this should be a 9-8 or 10-7 type of Team. As soon as injuries hit, I expect them to regress to 8-9 or 7-10. This 3 win sh*t that Kodiak spouts on the DN is nonsense. There's still plenty of talent to keep this Team in Purgatory this year.

Hopefully Miller and Kwesi can convince the Wilfs in the offseason that it's time to draft Kirk's replacement. This is our only hope other than a remarkably injury free season, which will still result in coming up short because Kirk only throws it where the read takes him.

I think many have pointed out some obvious issues with blaming it all on Zimmer that I would agree with. The reality is that Kirk being brought in never lived up to his salary which hurt us on the field while preventing us from adding more talent. To make it even worse the coach pointed out that would happen from the start but the GM forced that route on him anyways by multiple accounts (not on same page). When you then factor in the issues drafting it isn't a surprise at all we ended up where we did, it was completely predictable. 2018 is the furthest a Kirk Cousins team has ever made it but the expectations were supposed to be superbowl at the time. Zimmer had issues adjusting to this approach and that seemed especially true in his final year here by many accounts so it was time to go. He wasn't close to the only problem though. Right now as a Vikings fan it's just easiest to blame him because we are stuck with similar issues in regards to the roster not being quite good enough. If it was all Zimmers fault then we can sustain a few impactful injuries and still win the SB. That's exciting!

It's odd to me that Zimmer always was blamed for not doing enough with the offense and focusing too much on defense. He wasn't involved and didn't even get in with the QB until that final year... Oh also the entire offense is Zimmers fault, he is why they didn't do this or did too much of that. He is why Cousins only had (checks notes) the 10th most passing attempts in the league last year. You get the idea, people are all over the place to blame him depending on where you look it contradicts itself over and over. The reality is we have had many different offensive coordinators with different gameplans and styles working with him over the years and none of it really ended up paying off to the level hoped. Just like how Gruden and MCcvay also worked with him in Washington.

Zimmer needed to go in large part because of the decision to bring Cousins in. Before that he had done a good job turning this franchise around but that move really hurt us and we have been scrambling since. If you believe it was all Zimmer then you get to be excited for a Super Bowl this year. If you don't then you probably have to adjust your expectations down to 10-12 wins and probably 1 in the playoffs at most if KOC is a solid coach and things go our way (think similar to Cousins 2nd year here when we had Stefanski and great defense still).

Purple Insider: The truth and lies of pinning Vikings' past failures on Mike Zimmer



Link:

purpleinsider.substack.com/p/the-truth-and-lies-of-pinning-vikings?s=r

I don't remotely dislike Zim, just knew it was time to go.

So hopefully this pic infers what I hope it does- he's settling into enjoying a well-deserved retirement (like I wish I was).

Happy Birthday, Mike!

Didnt Kalil actually have a decntly long career? Longer than he should have I am sure.

Vikings luck in a nutshell...Get a top 4 pick..Take the best OL prospect and he turns to a cupcake.

Also note it was a weak class up top

1. Luck
2. RG3
3. Trent Richardson
4. Khahil
5. Justin Blackmon
6. Morris Claiborne
7. Mark Barron

Lots of busts up top..Just our luck when we are in the top 5 for once. Trade back wouldve been ideal. Obviously hindsight but just funny our last top 5 pick in a while.

Great discussion. Cousins may not have been a good fit for Zimmer, and he was overpaid. Zimmer was right that Cousins was not worth the money. He probably wanted Teddy, and Teddy would not have taken the Vikings to the Super Bowl either. But the team would be stronger with some Cousins money going to Free Agents.

I fault Rick for having weak 3rd down pass protection and a QB who holds the ball and rarely escapes the pass rush. With two great receivers, a decent 3rd receiver, and a good Tight End, the Vikings should have been better on 3rd down in 2020 and 2021.

But Zimmer also lost his players. And his Defense without a strong D-Line was weak. Not having Hunter for two years definitely hurt.

Most importantly, the Zimmer Defense and Play Calling lost its effectiveness. They were exposed and outcoached in the 2017 NFCC against the Eagles. Zimmer's D got passed by, and it was time to switch to a better scheme for the newer offenses.