Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Zimmer

Mike ZImmer
Sep 17, 2017; Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer looks at his play chart against the Pittsburgh Steelers during the first quarter at Heinz Field. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

I sat in my basement after watching the Minnesota Vikings eke out their victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday night and asked myself: what in the name of Mike Zimmer is going on with this team? They are, at times, a joy to watch. At other times, they are one of the most maddening Vikings squads to take the field since the days of Colonel Les Steckel.

Inconsistency is not a shocking trait for a professional sports team to have—it may even be true that it’s the norm—with consistently good (and consistently bad) teams forming the outliers around the middle ground. Most average NFL teams are not average week to week. Some weeks they shine like a true contender, others they look like a definitively subpar group. Those teams hover above, at, or below the .500 mark and toy with their fanbases’ emotions—as has been the case with our Vikings in 2021.

The thing is, these Vikings—with remarkable consistency, week in and week out—display their inconsistency all within the same game. Thursday night was perhaps the most egregious example—though, sadly, even this is up for debate. The general pattern that has fallen into place is that the Vikes come out early, display something approaching total dominance, then watch the offense stall and the defense deflate in the second half.

On Thursday, they went beyond that, thoroughly obliterating a playoff-contending Pittsburgh team for two-thirds of the game. Throughout the first half, the passing game looked great. Dalvin Cook—playing with two injured shoulders that most expected would keep him out 3 weeks, though he missed only 1—steamed through the Steelers defense thanks to huge holes provided by our sometimes-shaky offensive line (he finished with a 205-yard rushing night). The defense shut down and shut out Ben Roethlisberger, Najee Harris, and the rest of the Pittsburgh offense. They even avoided their historically bad habit of allowing points in the final two minutes of halves, getting to halftime up 23-0.  They extended the lead to what should have been a very comfortable 29-0 score early in the second half.

I don’t know about you, but I was feeling joyous and yet slightly uneasy at the half, and downright anxious at the first hint of trouble late in the third quarter. This is because the Vikings’ general pattern is stamped in my mind.

They showed it again Thursday night by melting down in the second half, in a fashion that startled fans, coaches, opposition, and the media alike. You could see it in the eyes of Mike Zimmer as he stood rigidly on the sideline watching the Steelers completely take over the game with 4 touchdowns in the final 17:11 of the game. You could hear it in the voices of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman as they described a turnaround that nearly reached historic proportions. Perhaps most importantly, it was surely in the pit of your stomach when the Steelers marched down the field in the final two minutes, threatening to tie the score and force overtime.

As fans, we pretty much knew it was coming. Then it came and we were helpless to stop it.

But the coaches and players were most definitely not helpless to stop it. Nor have they been throughout the previous versions of this Tale of Two Halves. Professional athletes – and the coaches who train them, guide them, and make the decisions behind them – are anything but helpless. No matter how Mike Zimmer looked or may have felt and looked on the sidelines, he is far from powerless.

One thing the Vikings tend to do when they take a lead into the second half is they become utterly predictable. Their mindset, almost from the 30-minute mark forward, is simply to chew up the clock and hope they can hang on. They run on first down. They run on second down. They observe the defense adjusting to this as the game wears on, but they change until it’s nearly too late. Even Dalvin Cook can’t be consistently successful when the other team knows, with utter confidence, what’s coming.

It’s almost as if they are accepting that a three-and-out is acceptable, as long as two minutes are burned from the clock. This, of course, is a strategy that has served many coaches very well for many years in the NFL. But in 2021, the degree of proficiency of teams to throw their way back into games is at an all-time high, and a team with as many holes as the Vikings have in the secondary (I’m looking at you, Bashaud Breeland) is going to have problems keeping good teams (or even the Detroit Lions) down long enough to let the clock expire for an easy W.

In second halves, teams throw and throw and throw at the Vikings, taking very little time off the clock while ripping off big gain after big gain. Our defensive mindset joins the offensive mindset: stay cautious. 28 points in 17ish minutes seemed remarkable at the time, but given the circumstances, it’s not. The Steelers simply took what the Vikings gave them.

To turn a lead into a win, Mike Zimmer and Offensive Coordinator Klint Kubiak are displaying the mindset of chew two minutes off the clock and then turn it over to the defense to get us some stops. This defense, however, is repeatedly wearing down in the second halves of games. They look incredibly solid for 28 minutes or so and then they start to reveal their flaws—older players start looking older and more tired, and younger players start looking younger, and more inexperienced.

The Vikings’ offensive mindset later in games should turn from asking “how do we chew up another two minutes” to “how do we get the next first down? How do we rip off a six minute drive?”

That they were ultimately able to rip off one such drive late in the game, culminating in a touchdown pass from Kirk Cousins to K.J. Osborn, was a blessing, while raising the question of: why didn’t they use that same approach throughout the whole second half? And that they were able to summon up some middle-of-the-first-half defensive prowess at the closing bell of the game to stop a would-be touchdown pass, seemed like a miracle. Still, they got a win.

The Vikings are now 6-7, and their march to mediocrity continues. It feels like a few tweaks from Mike Zimmer and his staff could make things a lot better going forward. But by now we all know that they could just easily get a whole lot worse.

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