Vikings Hall of Famer Joins Zimmer Criticism
K. Joudry
|
It has been a rough couple years for Mike Zimmer. The veteran coach couldn’t get his defense to perform over these past couple seasons, largely contributing to his team’s inability to get into the playoffs. Since being fired, there has been all kinds of criticism from former players. Recently, Paul Krause also articulated some Zim criticism.
Krause notes that he tried to offer some wisdom to the Minnesota HC:
Basically, the last couple years the Vikings defense got beat deep. And quite a few times. I told Zimmer, I says, ‘you got the best strong safety in football (Harrison Smith), leave him there and let him play strong safety and then find somebody that can’t get beat deep.’
Krause is obviously onto something. Getting roasted deep is a recipe for disaster for any defense, and there were several instances when the secondary couldn’t corral deep threats.
In fairness, it’s entirely plausible that Zim was asking for better personnel on defense but wasn’t getting it. There was clearly a disconnect between coach and GM. Nevertheless, Zimmer should have been able to create a better secondary, especially since it’s his area of expertise. In other words, Paul Krause is right when he draws attention to the defense’s issues.
The Hall-of-Fame safety then notes that Zimmer “being a defensive guru does not do anything for me” and that he’d have welcomed the chance to share his knowledge: “I’d like to talk to him because I’ll tell you something, I was out there doing it and none of these guys have not done it.”
Paul Krause played in the NFL for 16 seasons, 12 of which came in a Minnesota Vikings uniform. He finished his career with a remarkable 81 interceptions. He got a dozen as a rookie for Washington in 1964. He got to 10 interceptions with the Vikings in 1975.
Harrison Smith, Camryn Bynum, and Lewis Cine form an impressive group of safeties. If the latter two come anywhere close to Krause, they’ll have had tremendous success. Smith, meanwhile, has distinguished himself as the best safety of his generation. He’ll be remembered alongside Krause as one of the franchise’s great players.
Purple PTSD Also Read: What Kind of Role Can We Expect For Rookie Ty Chandler?
[brid autoplay=”true” video=”1025512″ player=”26281″ title=”WATCH%20Will%20Malik%20Willis%20be%20the%20Tennessee%20Titans%20starting%20QB%20″ duration=”192″ description=”Crissy Froyd and Carolyn Manno discuss Titans’ rookie QB Malik Willis, detailing the chance he becomes starting quarterback.” uploaddate=”2022-06-03″ thumbnailurl=”undefined” contentUrl=”https://cdn.brid.tv/live/partners/17660/streaming/1025441/1025441.m3u8″ width=”16″ height=”9″]