Yet Another Testimony Claiming Mike Zimmer Lost the Locker Room
Josh Frey
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When a new head coach takes over, especially one that runs a tight ship and doesn’t stand for any BS, it can be refreshing at first. There’s energy and excitement for hard-nosed football. That is evidenced by the fact that over Mike Zimmer’s first four seasons as the Minnesota Vikings head coach, the team went 39-25, including a 13-3 season in 2017. The final four seasons of his tenure were not nearly as pretty, though. Minnesota won 10+ games just once and missed the playoffs three times while going a combined 33-31-1.
It all culminated in a 2021 season that, even on the outside looking in, you could tell this wasn’t a fun team to be on, especially for Mike Zimmer’s secondary. This makes sense. The joke around Vikings fandom was always that Zimmer could never have enough DBs come draft day, and it was quite clear that he gave this portion of his team some extra attention.
In 2021, it became clear the attention had grown toxic. 2020 rookie standout Cam Dantzler was unengaged. After a stellar training camp and preseason, Kris Boyd fell off the face of the earth. Bashaud Breeland was cut after an altercation with the coaching staff. Even Patrick Peterson, despite his age, didn’t live up to the CB1 billing that he has filled throughout his career. Zimmer and GM Rick Spielman were then fired after another uninspiring season.
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Following the firing, there were a flurry of reports suggesting what everyone already believed: Zimmer had lost the locker room. Just in the last couple days, another such testimony was given by none other than the aforementioned Boyd. His reasoning behind this? Some tight rectums.
“With the last staff, they were like, whatever they were dealing with or were scared of, I don’t know,” Boyd reflected. “They would walk around with their assholes, like, tight. [They] would always be strict about everything. Like any time you messed up, it’s like the world ended.”
Hey, if I was constipated for five months, I wouldn’t be a happy camper, either. In all seriousness though, it seems like Zimmer was a cornered pit bull toward the end of his head coaching tenure. He knew that if 2021 wasn’t a successful season, it would spell the end of his time with the Vikings. With that type of pressure, on top of all the reports and rumors across the country, he lashed out, and eventually, his coaching fell on deaf ears.
A change was desperately needed, and to this point, it seems that the transition to Kevin O’Connell and his new staff has worked. Kris Boyd spoke to that as well:
“They way more chill, way more relaxed. Whatever we got to get fixed, we’re going to fix it. We’re going to keep rolling. We’re going to bounce back and figure it out. [They’ve changed] the whole vibe. Everybody’s way more relaxed.”
We’ll see how they fare once September rolls around, but so far, so good, seems to be the review of KOC.