‘Hot Seat’ Chatter for Vikings Head Coach Intensifies

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Sep 17, 2021
Quinn Harris-USA TODAY Sports.

Love him, hate him, or merely tolerate him, Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer is the NFL’s second-mostly likely skipper to be terminated, according to oddsmakers after Week 1.

The Vikings lost a clumsy game to the Cincinnati Bengals last weekend, conducting a gameplan peppered by penalties. Ultimately, Minnesota was penalized 12 times and lost the game in overtime, 27-24. As 3.5-point underdogs before the contest, the Vikings matchup in Cincinnati was their “easiest” one in the first month of the season as the following three opponents include the Arizona Cardinals, Seattle Seahawks, and Cleveland Browns. Now, the Vikings have to steal one of those games – while still treading water with an additional home win – to erase the vile memory of penalty-fueled futility at the Bengals.

And because of the 0-1 start to the 2021 – coupled with seven other seasons under his belt – Zimmer is floated in ‘hot seat’ discussions.

Winning cures hot-seat blues. That’s what the Vikings will have to do in Arizona on Sunday – or rattle off three consecutive home victories to classify the first two games as outliers. Otherwise, Zimmer will remain on this list. Each time the Vikings lose, the cries for his dismissal will increase in volume.

As a whole product, the Zimmer brand of Vikings is quite good. From 2014 to now, Minnesota’s win-loss record of 64-48-1 (.571) ranks eighth in the NFL among all teams for win percentage amid the last eight seasons. Zimmer outperforms 24 other franchises as a matter of fact.

But his teams – sprinkled with talent like Dalvin Cook, Adam Thielen, Danielle Hunter, Eric Kendricks, and Harrison Smith – are expected to be better than eighth in the league. Minnesota infamously has not won a Super Bowl, so when Zimmer doesn’t accomplish that task – it’s time to find a coach who can. That’s the anti-Zimmer sentiment anyway. A narrative in the Vikings sphere of influence goes a little something like this: Zimmer fosters goodness teetering on mediocrity – not greatness. Only a new, hypothetical coach can whisk the team to a Lombardi trophy – is the working theory. That could be Eric Bieniemy, P.J. Fleck, or the hottest young offensive coordinator available this January. Options will be available for the Vikings if they indeed move on from Zimmer.

That’s still a long way off, however. If the Vikings win their next four games or so, then the Super Bowl trajectory will reappear. That’s how fast The Digital Age moves. One loss is an invitation to doomsday, tear-it-down to the studs bemoaning. A road victory over the suddenly-good Cardinals would cause the same overreacters from this week to declare something like, “I knew this team had it in them.” Contemplative, rational thought on the entirety of a product or an NFL season seems to be shrinking in prominence.

In other odds, the Vikings Super Bowl chances dipped after Week 1, too. Minnesota is now in the same category as the Denver Broncos for Super Bowl odds, holding a +4800 moneyline before the Cardinals game.


Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. He hosts a podcast with Bryant McKinnie, which airs every Wednesday with Raun Sawh and Sally from Minneapolis. His Viking fandom dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ and The Doors (the band).

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