Patrick Peterson Joined the Vikings for One Main Reason
Former Arizona Cardinals cornerback Patrick Peterson embarked on a second act to his career, departing the desert after 10 seasons, eight Pro Bowls, and three First-Team All-Pro selections.
On St. Patrick’s Day, Patrick Peterson chose the Minnesota Vikings as the destination for that next chapter. The 31-year-old was nowhere near the Vikings radar for free agent possibilities – nobody knew he had an eye on Minnesota. He’ll earn $8 million in 2021 for a one-year stint with the Vikings, a team hoping to rebound from a mediocre 2020 season that ended with a 7-9 standing. Peterson in the secondary should be an apt move to rectify the NFL’s fourth-worst defense in 2020.
Peterson chose the Vikings as his new home for one primary reason: Mike Zimmer.
Image courtesy of Vikings.com
Around Thanksgiving last year, an article from GoLongTD.com detailed the alleged nasty parts of a Mike Zimmer-led locker room. The article traveled far and wide, labeling Zimmer as a stubborn coach whose prickly demeanor irritated players. This was also a time for the Vikings when the season was at a “meh” spot, so folks were starved for anti-Zimmer ammunition.
The 2020 season ended and free agency began. Lo and behold, four Vikings players – count them – Stephen Weatherly, Mackensie Alexander, Sheldon Richardson, and Everson Griffen all returned to the Vikings after stops elsewhere.
Why in the world would a player want to waltz back into a seething, unmalleable, and offense-illiterate culture? Scrap just one player — how about four players? Probably because the “people don’t want to play for him” fodder was false or severely overblown.
On Monday, Peter King of NBC Sports wrote about the Vikings in his weekly column and described how the Peterson-Vikings marriage came to be. It was a matter of Peterson singularly finding Zimmer. Whoodathunkit?
King wrote about Peterson’s agent contacting the Vikings:
Spielman didn’t have much money under the declining cap, and he never even called agent Joel Segal about Peterson, coming off a poor age-30 season in Arizona. The GM thought the price would be too high. Spielman was changing planes in the Atlanta airport on his way to scout a Pro Day in March when his phone buzzed. It was Segal. “He said Patrick wanted to play for us, and it wouldn’t cost as much as we thought,” Spielman told me. “I put Joel in touch with [Vikes cap man] Rob Brzezinski, and we had a deal done in an hour, maybe hour-and-a-half. It’s one of the fastest free-agent deals we’ve ever done. Joel just told us, ‘Zim, Zim, Zim. Pat wants to play for Mike Zimmer.’
And that’s about as ringing of an endorsement to be found applying to a head coach. Naturally, Peterson sees playoff of Super Bowl potential in the Vikings, but that trickle-down implication is borne of Zimmer’s leadership.
Now, the team actually has to go out and reach those playoffs and beyond. General Manager Rick Spielman added defensive players this offseason like items in an Amazon cart, notably acquiring Peterson, Dalvin Tomlinson, Sheldon Richardson, Bashaud Breeland, and the aforementioned Griffen. Too, the return of Danielle Hunter, Michael Pierce, and Anthony Barr – players that missed nearly all of 2020 – establishes the team’s defensive roster as one more akin to the Zimmer experience. Before 2020, Minnesota never fell outside of the Top 11 in points allowed during the Zimmer reign. In the pandemic season, the Vikings ranked 29th.
Peterson is trending to start, as well. Some mystery arose when Spielman signed him plus Breeland and Mackensie Alexander. It was a lot of bodies, most of them worthy of CB1 and CB2 consideration on an NFL depth chart. Recently, though, Jeff Gladney was released and Cameron Dantzler’s stock has curiously tumbled a bit. That sets Peterson up nicely for bonafide CB1 or CB2 duty.
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