After Brutal Loss to Previously Winless Lions, Mike Zimmer Needs To Go
It’s hard to say it, as he has brought plenty of good to the Vikings organization in his eight years, including multiple playoff wins. However, after ultimately costing his team in today’s 29-27 loss to the Lions, it has become clear — with this team going nowhere — Mike Zimmer needs to be relieved of his duties immediately as head coach of the Vikings.
The Vikings could use the excuse of being shorthanded. They were without Dalvin Cook, Christian Darrisaw, Eric Kendricks, and Anthony Barr entering the game and losing Adam Thielen on the game’s first possession.
However, they played down to their competition of an 0-10-1 team for most of the day, resulting in the ugliest half of Vikings football, maybe all year. In spite of this, they still had a chance to steal the win after the Lions turned the ball over in Vikings territory, enabling Justin Jefferson to cap off a career day with a go-ahead touchdown. Yet, after the score, the Lions had one last chance to win, and a team like the Vikings [that should be better than they appear] would be expected to stop the Lions from driving 75 yards. However, that didn’t happen.
The crucial and fatal flaws made by Zimmer on the final drive begin with calling two timeouts inside of ten seconds remaining after the Vikings failed to tackle a Lions short gain from going out of bounds.
On both plays where timeouts were called, the Lions were wholly discombobulated and disorganized. They didn’t know what to do in the huddle. However, by Zimmer using those timeouts, it allowed the Lions to regroup and avoid catastrophe.
The even more puzzling decision by Zimmer on the final drive than calling two timeouts is that he decided after coming out of his last timeout to not bring any pressure from the defensive line towards Goff. The Vikings played cover zero or prevent defense with the closest defenders ten yards away from the targeted receiver.
The formation and play call is just pure malpractice by Zimmer. Goff was flustered earlier in the game when the Vikings defense pressured him, so it doesn’t make sense to only have two guys going after him and giving him all the time in the world.
It also is pure malpractice and just mind-numbing how of the eight defenders all covering the receiver how none of them were covering the end zone. The closest defenders towards St. Brown on the play above, Cameron Dantzler and Xavier Woods, were each ten yards away from him. It was predetermined by Zimmer’s choice on that play design that the Lions would walk off the Vikings.
At least if you had one more rusher towards Goff, or if you had one or two of those defenders out in space right at the end zone, maybe St. Brown doesn’t score, and perhaps the Vikings’ playoff hopes aren’t crumbled to dust like the billions of people after Thanos’s snap.
It’s not just this game, but every close game that the Vikings have played has featured a litany of unsettling decisions by Zimmer and his staff late in those games as well. You could go back in time and wonder if the Vikings don’t go for two and kick extra points after their touchdown drives that maybe this whole scenario is a moot point. But quite plainly, although I am focusing on the final drive and last play, the Vikings just weren’t prepared to play and to beat a team much worse than them on paper today.
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They were honestly only in the game late thanks to their opponents helping them out on multiple occasions, namely by throwing when they should have continued running the ball. It’s just flabbergasting how the Vikings always have found themselves in these late-game situations in virtually every single game they have played, each with a unique set of results.
This whole debacle could have been avoided by better decision-making by the head coach and the defensive staff.
I wrote last week how fans should expect the unexpected. That was this.
Folks were saying after last week’s loss to the 49ers that” all the Vikings needed to do” was win their next three games, and here they are. Now, their playoff hopes are all but gone.
This franchise is running around in circles, trying their best to evade collapses and teeter into the playoffs with a middling record. However, from my observation of every game this season, every loss that the Vikings have suffered was preventable and was caused by mistakes or poor decisions by the coaching staff and mainly by Zimmer himself.
I think it’s time for a clean break. I understand that the Vikings are now on a short week with a home game against the Steelers on Thursday night upcoming, but I just don’t see how this team can continue fighting to survive when they see how their head coach failed them. I don’t think there would really be much difference the rest of the way if the Vikings were helmed by someone like Andre Patterson in an interim role versus keeping Zimmer.
It is evident that one way or the other, Zimmer will not be retained for the 2022 season and that the Wilfs will have to search for a new coach, and rumors have swirled that they have already begun cursory searching for potential names. However, this team just doesn’t have the juice to get back in the chase, especially after losing to a team in the Lions in this specific manner. I think that many of the reasons for the Vikings’ shortcomings lay on Zimmer’s feet, despite injuries. That being said, it’s just time for the Vikings to move on and for Zimmer and the team to go their separate ways.
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