Mike Zimmer took this team to the playoffs in his 2nd season as head coach after taking over a team that had the LAST ranked defense and a quarterback-less offense. He goes 11-5 and wins the division last year then has the year from hell losing the 4 most important positions on offense due to injury and now all of the sudden he's being questioned. My question is, what did you guys expect? Did you expect 16-0? 12-4? 11-5 again? Heck 9-7?? Did anyone honestly expect that after these injuries happened? I sure hope not. There probably isnt a team in the NFL that could overcome that. You dont seem to take that into account. You make it sound like this is the same exact team from last year and we should be 11-5 or better and that just isnt realistic given these injuries.Mothman wrote:
Yes, it is...
Let me repeat myself again Jim. He LOST his QB, RB, LT and RT for the year practically. This offense had to be MODIFIED because our tackles couldnt hold up when our starters went down. HOW in gods name did you really expect this offense to improve when that happens?? I would say that it is next to impossible to improve when you lose those 4 positions. Do it to any team in the NFL and they will be worse. Did you really think to yourself when all this happened "Yeah our offense is definitely going to be better this season without Teddy, AP, Kalil and Smith". I sure hope not.Mothman wrote:
At this point, why wouldn't a Vikings fan be skeptical about Zimmer? The sun doesn't rise and set on defense. The offense has been gradually driven into the ground under this staff and only the utterly pathetic Rams offense is preventing the Vikes from finally hitting rock bottom in that department this season so no, I'm not Zimmer's biggest fan but I would like him to make me a bigger fan and I'd like him to succeed as Vikings head coach. There's plenty to like about the man. I'm not rooting against him.
How can you say this "offense has been driven into the ground" when we've had the injuries we did?? Is that even a true tell of what the offense could or couldnt do?? No. It could have been an improvement from last year if the injuries happen. We dont KNOW that. But to sit here and say the offense has been driven into the ground and primarily basing that assumption on this year is extremely unfair if you ask me. If we currently had Teddy, AP, Kalil and Smith and we were a worse offense then last year then yeah, I would question that too.
But no way am I going to sit here and criticize Mike Zimmer's offense based primarily off of this year given what has happened. If he had a healthy offense or only missing a player or two, then yeah. But to miss the 4 MOST important positions on the offense, it's extremely unfair if you ask me.
You know just as well as I do that we had next to no change having a better offense this year with 4 major injuries.
Come on Jim. He HANDS DOWN had the worst two minute defense I have ever seen in my life. NEVER blitzed, sat back and let teams nickel and dime him all the way down the field and literally never did anything different. His offense wasnt much different than last years where AP practically carried the team. Even more so back then than he has since Zim has been here. If he was such a "good coach" he probably would be doing a lot more than being just a secondary coach for the Baltimore Ravens. Bottom line is, he didnt run a good defense and his offense wasnt a whole lot better than Zims (and before you try and jump all over me for that, lets not forget AP was in his prime through most of Fraziers years there. Zim has had him 1 out of 3 years). He had good players on his defenses. But was notorious for calling bad games. Frazier's and Lovie Smith's style of defense was very outdated and didnt fly in the NFL anymore. Thats why one of them is out of the NFL and the other is nearing the end. He was one of the worst in-game head coaches I've seen in a while in Minnesota.Frazier made in-game adjustments too. That's such an obvious fact it's not even worth arguing about. I supported him because I think he's a good coach and because I felt the Vikings dealt him a bad hand.
And to say it's such an "obvious fact" really baffles me. The only obvious thing was that if we were winning at the end of the game, you knew exactly what Frazier was going to do and thats sit back, send 0 blitzers and let offenses walk their way down the field on us. It was a guarantee every time we had the lead late. And lets save our breath about the Detroit game this year. One game in 3 years from what I can remember where Zimmer did that. Frazier did it literally every time we had a lead and we lost many, many games because of it.