Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - What's going on with Mike Zimmer's contract?

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

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Soccer stars and the moments that made them. Premiering this summer on Blue Wire. Welcome to another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar here as always and joining me for his very first appearance. We have gotten the clearance for one Judd Zolgad to come on Purple Insider. What is up, Judd? Matthew Collar, it's a privilege, an honor, all of those things. This is my debut show. I can't imagine, though, if you're going to bring me on,

I can't imagine what you want to talk about. It must be something, a feel-good story. It must be about the competition for the third string receiver spot because I would only imagine that an appearance by me would call for something that's going to be nothing but positive since that is my very nature. That's right. So we had Eric Eager on another podcast episode and he said he thinks the Vikings are going six and 10.

So I figured I would bring you on to talk about how they're going to go 14 and two this year. No, that's, that is not the case. It is of course some calamity with the Vikings and you are the appropriate person to discuss this, but also it's a matter that requires a lot of context, and you and I have covered every Vikings game together for the last four years, and that's most of the Mike Zimmer era.

So I feel like we have a really good feeling for this particular topic, which is friend of the show, Chad Graff, from The Athletic, reported that there is growing tension between Mike Zimmer and the Vikings, and he wrote this. Zimmer has been irked by the fact that it's now July and he remains without a contract, according to multiple sources, who requested anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive topic. He's begun preparing for what seems like the growing possibility

that he may coach this season in the final year of his contract. Judd, so I wrote a big piece with all the context behind why a coach so successful as Mike Zimmer in his win-loss record would be going into the final year of his contract. But I want you to just give me your reaction to that sentence, just the parts that I didn't mess up. So I read about this last week from Chadley, and I went back and immediately Googled my name, affiliation, and Zim's name,

because I knew that starting at some point late last season, I started to write about this, because it's very rare in this league that a head coach or, in this case, head coach and GM with Rick Spielman go into the last year of their contracts. And I found I'd written about it like four times, right? Okay. So that was all though, for the most part, Matthew, pre-pandemic. So, like, there were questions to be asked, and you could try and come to conclusions about are they – what exactly are the Wilfs trying to do here. But I'll start off by saying this one. As we sit here going into mid-July and training camp, still as far as we know,

scheduled to start on July 28th for the Vikings, I'm going to start you off with now that we're in the midst of a pandemic, I'm just confused here because my question, I guess, if I could ask the Wilfs this would be what do you expect Zim and especially if Rick is also not had his contract extended or agreed to an extension, what do you expect from them going into a season where nobody knows what's going to happen, including are we going to finish said season? So if this was a normal time, I would tell you that, you know what, I might sort of get it and I might not be a fan of sending the head coach

into the last year of his contract but let's talk about it but I am perplexed now because in the midst of a pandemic which raises tons of questions about the start of the season about if we're going to finish it about the team about the health of players consistently on a week-to-week basis. I'm amazed that the Wilfs didn't come to Zim and Spielman at some point in time and say, okay, with a pandemic going on, guys, we are going to do exactly what we did after the 2018 campaign, which is to extend you out through 2021 in this case, just to create some continuity and certainty. It's almost like now I don't get what they're doing. It's confusing. And I'm not saying what they're doing. It's confusing.

And I'm not saying this as a Zim or Spielman apologist or fan. I'm saying this from a business standpoint. I am left very perplexed by the fact that at least your head coach is twisting in the wind, and ownership appears to be, Matthew, satisfied with that. From the standpoint you're talking about setting expectations for anything this year at this point in the game is extremely difficult and if even things go off just fine which I'm skeptical as heck about but let's just say that the season gets rolling and everybody stays inside and you know we get a few positive tests here or there but the season is able to go forward and you're able to play regular games well are you judging Zimmer the same when his defense does not

have the advantage of home field with 60 plus thousand people at U.S. Bank Stadium? There is a big difference between the Vikings defense at home and away, but I still think that Zimmer takes advantage of that home field advantage as well as anyone. They have a very difficult quarterback schedule, which is at the crux of Eric Eager's argument for why he thinks they won't be as good as you would expect. He's got a lot of young players that he's going to have to teach in the secondary, especially at the cornerback position, without the benefit of OTAs, minicamp, rookie camp, any of that stuff, and just doing it all over zoom meetings i don't and then potentially a messed up training camp we don't know how cleanly training camp is going to go off and so you're sending him into the final year of his contract well how do you set expectations

because if kirk cousins tests positive for covid and has to miss three weeks or four weeks or something like that because he actually gets sick uh And you lose three out of those four games with Sean Mannion. Are you looking at Zimmer and being like, well, you missed playoffs, buddy. Sorry. I mean, I don't know. I don't know how you set those expectations now. The other part of it that beyond that, which is a complication, is that you have to have an answer for why and where you would want to go with this. I get the context behind it, and we'll talk about all the reasons that they would. But if you're looking for something else, what are you looking for otherwise?

Because you have the right system for your quarterback at this moment. So you don't really have to go looking for that offensive guru, young genius person. What is it that you're looking for that would be different from what you've had from Mike Zimmer as your head coach would kind of be my questions, because this franchise in 2013 was about the bottom of the barrel in the NFL and now year in and year out they're talked about as a potential Super Bowl contender and this is the first year since I've covered the team starting in 2016 that they have not been in that conversation very much and you could still make a case that they could threaten for it in an NFC that is wide open so the the big picture here on Mike Zimmer is that there's been a heck of a lot of success.

But Judd, on the micro level, on the, like I am, at TCL Performance Center over the last four years, or Winter Park before that, every day, you have felt the tension. You've heard the comments that have alienated people. You've seen the organization pushing toward a progressive mantra on the outside with a head coach who has just sort of discovered what Black Lives Matter means and discovered that his players want to be socially active and decided to support them, but had not been supportive of anything like that before and rather viewed it as a distraction these things kind of matter to an organization that hired a very progressive

COO in Andrew Miller recently and so there's a lot more to it even from the broader perspective there and then on the field I think a lot of people wonder are you going the right direction by wanting a more conservative approach by wanting an approach of running the ball first and then doing play action off it, which we know does work from a lot of other teams, but it also kind of has this antiquated feel to it when you are running more than anybody else in the NFL, especially when you paid this much money for your quarterback. So a long-winded way of saying there's a lot more to this than just, hey, he's got a really good win-loss record.

And it might be as simple of conversation right now. And again, this is fine if it's ordinary times, okay? This might, the conversation that we are having right now might be as simple as the term shelf life. People's shelf life in sports, especially now and especially coaches, they have a shelf life in which unless your name is Belichick or Popovich, right? You go to a place, you do your best, people start to tune you out, get tired of your act, you get fired, doesn't mean you're done coaching, you go get another job. And in ordinary times, I would say that that conversation would apply to what we're talking about right here. And it makes perfect sense. But again, these aren't, you know what I think the Wills did? I think, to a certain degree, I think ownership got caught with their pants down,

because I still contend to this day that what you and I and a lot of people have talked about was entirely true. If they lose to the Saints, Mike's rights get traded to Dallas. They get a take your pick, second round, third round pick back. Stefanski is named head coach. Kubiak is his mentor OC, right? And the Vikings, to a large degree, with a lot of people at TCO and how they think now and how they are driven, have their coach. Kevin is going to listen to them. He's going to take their input, which I don't think Mike likes, but they upset the Saints. Oh, wow. To the fan base, it's great. You're going to San Francisco. You want to play a game. Can't believe this. Internally, I'd be very curious to

know how they thought because it was almost like starting that day and then go into the pandemic. The Wilfs were like, oh, hold on a second here. What's going on now? It almost seems, and the Wilfs do a good job, and I'm usually not very critical of them, but it almost seems like people that own the Vikings are caught off guard here because why else would you again seemingly send your coach and probably GM into the last year of a contract when they're going to be dealing they you need right now collar without a doubt right if you're a sports team you need one word stability because there is none and and I don't care how many times football people say, distractions don't bother us. It's BS.

It bothers us. It causes problems. And I have seen distractions divide teams and create problems. And the last thing that I would want to do if I'm going to go into the 2020 season, assuming that you're going to play 16 games, the last thing I would want to do is create distractions. Ownership is creating another distraction when, oh, by the way, COVID-19 is going to take care of that just fine. And so I

really think when the Vikings upset the Saints, it in some ways caused a trickle down of what's next, because I think they knew the exact what's next if you go to the Superdome and lose. If you win, which nobody expected, you know, not the Wilfs, not Matthew Collar, not Zolgad, nobody, but when they won, I think there was a lot of, oh, huh, what's next now? And let's look at this from Zimmer's perspective, because I agree with everything that you said, and from what my understanding was going into that game is exactly what you said that we might have been having a very different conversation if they had lost by 20 points or even I don't know which way it goes if they don't get the ball first

breeze drives down the field they kick a field goal and win and instead of talking about the great throat Adam Thielen we're talking about the blown lead again to New Orleans in the playoffs, which Minneapolis Miracle is a blown lead and quite an impressive blown lead, by the way. Even in Philadelphia, you get the lead early in that game and you end up losing 38 to 7. And all these things have added up. The look on the Wilfs' face after the Philadelphia game, I saw Mark and Ziggy come off the field and I was standing outside of the locker room and they looked like their heads were going to explode with frustration because not just did you lose but you got run out of the building and if you lose to Philadelphia on the road with two backup quarterbacks going at it okay well anything can happen but you were laughed out of that place

and right there started and then it was ramped up to 11 with the signing of Kirk Cousins but that was the start of pressure it was all right well you showed that you could do this in kind of a fluky and weird year but now we're going to expect you to do this and then win that game and so when you've won 18 games in two years with your $84 million quarterback that the Wilfs have always been willing to spend as much as they ever want of cash. And I've been told before by some people who really know what they're talking about, look at the cash. Don't look at the cap because a lot of teams can handle the cap. It's the cash. And they have spent and spent and spent. And the results have been one playoff win in two years and one that had to come down to the very end.

So you could see that their expectations were higher and why they would put more pressure on Mike Zimmer after spending that much cash. Now, from Zimmer's perspective, though, if you're him, you're saying, look, I have a winning percentage that's better than Doug Peterson's as an NFL coach. That is true. And so Peterson, yes, he has the Super Bowl, so of course we would give him the edge. Tie goes to the Super Bowl man. But he won a lot of games without quarterbacks, with eye issues,

with all sorts of different things, And he's won a lot of football games and turned this franchise around. And you could see why he would say, well, I don't want another one year deal or something like that. After we just went to the playoffs and I just won. An important point too, is who his quarterback is. If he signs a short-term deal, you are locked into being Kirk Cousins' head coach. If you are Mike Zimmer and you look at it as sign me to a four-year deal, a five-year deal, make me the coach for the long term here, then at the end of Cousins' contract, you might get to draft and develop your own next quarterback and have another extension after that if you're Zimmer. And you could be the coach for a really, really long time.

I think that that's where the main crux of the issue is between ownership and between Mike Zimmer. Zimmer says, my resume is great, and let me coach through the Cousins era and then to the next quarterback if there is one if we want to move on. And the Wilfs are saying, we still kind of want to see you prove it with this quarterback that we spent so much money and I would also tack on to this it is not trivial that Stefan Diggs had to be traded in part because he couldn't get on board with what the head coach wanted to do I mean that matters it has to matter to the ownership yeah he got a first round pick

back Justin Jefferson might be great but you had to trade away the ownership yeah he got a first round pick back Justin Jefferson might be great but you had to trade away the Minneapolis Miracle receiver who goes down as one of the best receivers in Vikings history with the numbers that he put up now of course not Moss or Carter level but the next notch down he's right there and so that has to be weighed in also. But I think from Zimmer's perspective, he probably wants a long-term commitment from them. Or, Judd, I think he could just say, you know what, fine, I'll coach into the final year. But guess who ain't coming back after this? Which is what I thought too, except for Graff's report sort of flies in the face of that by saying he's disgruntled. Because I asked that question of a Vikings employee a while back and I was told you know Mike is a shocking news here

a defiant type of guy and so I thought that he might say take your one-year contract extension and shove it give me my last year I'll prove you wrong and then I'm going to hit the open market myself all of that made sense until graphs report came along that might, might be disgruntled about where he's been left, which is, but I'm just saying, I can't believe that all these sides don't get together and say, boys, again, it's 2020 and we got a bleeping pandemic here. You know, let's try and win. If you create a GM contract problem,

a coach contract problem, COVID-19 problems, like how much do the Vikings want to bring on in terms of distractions? Like this is the year, and this is supposed to be a good team, this is the year to not have them. I do think it's interesting though that they extended Kirk, which to me says that the Wilfs are in bed on the side of probably the Spielman camp because that was more Kirk's guy. And the one question that we are not getting answered, Matthew, at this point that I would love to hear is this. Have Rick and Mike sort of divided and are the Wilfs in the Rick camp?

And you know what? 15 draft picks, that draft, impressive. And keep in mind, too, the Wilfs will spend, I think the Wilfs are effective owners, but the Wilfs are you and me, basically. They're football fans. They really don't know a lot more about this. Like there's no secret ingredient that they know.

And Rick is a convincing guy. And so if they have sided with the Cousins' Rick camp, and now they're saying, well, the trend is going towards offensive guys, and Mike is really crusty, and we have people in the building that don't like Mike. I just am becoming curious if this is a simple divide as well. And then the other conspiracy theory, and i don't think this would be a smart move but i could see this being at least thrown out is if the vikings have a pretty good offensive year in 2020 are they going to try and convince gary kubiak to take the head coaching job which

health-wise personally i would say don't do that but you know you know, if Gary gets the most from Kirk again, and Mike is continuing to say run, run, run, and rubs people the wrong way, I wonder if the new presidential ticket for the 2021 Vikings could be the Spielman-Kubiak campaign with Zim on the outs. The fact that Spielman doesn't have an extension either, though. I don't think he does, but we don't know that for sure. And we don't know whose camp is where. And there's a new team president, as you said, which could be weighing things in certain directions.

There's a lot here we don't know. But the one thing that we both know from covering this team is that if there's opportunity for dysfunction, there are times they will seize that opportunity for dysfunction. Before we get back to the conversation, I want to remind you to go to SodaStick.com to get your original Minnesota sports-inspired goods. Baseball is back, and SodaStick just launched its latest partnership with Hormel Foods and the Tommy Watkins Foundation to pay homage to the Hormel Row of Fame.

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Use promo code PURPLEINSIDER for free shipping. That's SOTASTICK.COM, S-O-T-A-S-T-I-C-K.COM, original Minnesota sports-inspired goods. Code PURPLEINS purple insider for free shipping but I think that we would have heard if Spielman had a contract extension at the moment because there are certain let's just say certain reporters that are tied in pretty well to that type of situation that's the way I'm going to phrase it who would be on it if that happened so that's my feeling is i'm gonna go forward thinking that there hasn't been an extension

because i haven't seen that come from certain people who would know is kind of the way uh i am interpreting that could it be a wink could it be a wink wink nod nod it's gonna get done with one of them and not the other could could be yeah could be and it's possible that certain people would not want to put it out there at the moment with Zimmer not having a deal done because that even fuels the fire so do you not want to mention it to anybody because they don't have to make this public like uh well actually the contracts aren't made public either it's just that there are so many people trying to get a hold of them that we all know what they are. And eventually teams will grow up and start to just give you the details.

But that's a whole other issue. If we assume that the front office does not have an extension at this moment, that is a little odd to me that they would not want to extend Spielman. But I do think that this was kind of a trial period for this offseason to see how well they could restock the cupboard. And through about half of the offseason, I was looking around going, I don't know what to make of this. I mean, they haven't brought back Everson.

They signed Michael Pierce to a contract that, well, I like the player, a guy who's never played 600 snaps in the league before, that you're going to be asking a lot of, and you're kind of paying a lot more than Bill Belichick has ever played for his nose tackles, for example, who do the same job as Michael Pierce. Okay, you haven't really added to the weapons. I'm not impressed with Tajay Sharp. I think he could be this year's Jordan Taylor, who doesn't even make it out of training camp so okay I'm not impressed and then you get to what you got back from the digs trade if you had to trade them okay fine and then the draft was downright terrific we never know how it's ever going to work out but across the board the people that I trust on the draft have said they get an A they got a lot of talent

here to restock the cupboard and though some other drafts of theirs, 2016 and 2017, notably have not netted a whole heck of a lot of talent, the Irv Smith, you know, and then you go the Alex Madison, you know, good players from that draft, BC Johnson, and then you add it to what they got from this draft. And you look at their salary cap situation going forward, it actually looks pretty good. Their overall ability to evaluate players through this Zimmer era has been pretty, pretty solid. I mean, when you, it's going to be judged by how well Cousins plays always. How many playoff wins did Kirk Cousins get? But a lot of teams would have made the same move to bring in a quarterback like that with a team like that. So I don't use that as a ding. I had a different plan at that time myself for the quarterback position, but I'm

not going to say, well, you screwed it up by signing a guy who has been to the Pro Bowl and had one of the best seasons in the league last year. So I guess I look at the front office through the lens of, it's one of the better ones in the league as far as putting talent on the field and you have one of the better coaches in the league but they don't have contract extensions which means there's something there right that is keeping from from doing that there's friction of some sort there's no question right there is friction and i don't know if it's zim and the wilfs i don't know if it's zim and Spielman. I don't know exactly where. But this is too weird.

And the only time that the Wilfs have had a coach go in the last year of his contract and coach on that contract was 2005 with Tice. And that was the first year that the Wilfs owned the team, and they didn't know exactly what they were doing, and they learned as they went. And you always sort of felt Mike's going to get whacked when this is done. With Zim's case, they seem to have found a good coach. They certainly have their footing as far as knowing, you would think, what they want. That's why I'm saying this one doesn't make sense.

Like the Tice thing, that was a combustible year. But look, they took the team from Red mccombs the team was a mess everybody knew that um and so it sort of made sense to say let's wait and see this is the one i don't get and i just my overriding feeling is that the ownership group themselves are introducing distractions and things that you don't want. I mean, keeping a group of mostly adult men in their 20s focused on football in 2020, Collar, is going to be a pain in the ass. It's going to be really difficult. If you know that I'm trying to tell you what to do and not to go to bars and do this and do that, and I'm in the last year of my contract and you're a halfway decent player you're going to think go to hell mike so like they're they're just the wilfs are

providing license here to create problems and if the vikings weren't going to be good i might be like okay i sort of get that but i'm not saying they're going to be great but they shouldn't be a dumpster fire and so you're introducing things that are actually going to distract from you being as competitive as you probably should be. And I can't put my finger on the reason why. And if this Delvin Cook thing goes any farther than into training camp, then the Vikings might, as they so often do, lead the league in distractions going into training camp. It's a fascinating situation to dive into because on the surface, both the front office and coaching staff look like one that you would want to view as the Steelers or the Patriots, teams that have stuck with their coaches, Seattle, for a very long time, even through some bumps in the road. And I know that Pittsburgh did let Tomlin go into the final year of his deal at one point,

so it's not completely unprecedented, but there are a few teams that have developed incredible stability and you would think that they would want to go. I will say to the point that you were making about what, where the rift is, and I'm not saying this is entirely where it is, but it does exist is in the analytics realm. Spielman is an analytics believer. And I think it shows in some of their finds throughout the draft

with guys that they have loved the analytics on. Daniil Hunter is the one that they love to hold up the most. Hell of a find in the third round. So they're very big on that, and Mike has made it clear through the media, and I've heard from people as well who are in the know when it comes to this that he just does not put a ton of value on he loves some of the statistics that will help him out with game plans uh is my understanding and some some weeks he and I have

gone back and forth in press conferences about hey hey, here's a statistic that you would like or that kind of thing because he knows that I love diving into the analytics. But – and I'm always giving him a hard time about it, including the article I wrote coming out of the NFL Combine about how there is this butting of heads because he went to the podium at the Combine and kind of made fun of his analytics department. Like they said I should kick a field goal then. What do they know? And, you know, I mean, for a team that talks. He's Mike Solisha, dude. He's Mike Solisha. For a team that talks so much around the draft about how much they love analytics,

to say that was like, okay, Mike, maybe you were kind of trying to joke around, but I don't think that some people took it that way. So, you know, it might just be like you said, that you get to a certain point with a coach and you have to kind of decide where is this going to go? And in different examples throughout history, there have been times where you thought a coach was going to be out and then the guy won the Super Bowl. Like Tom Coughlin is a good example. You would have thought before he won the first Super Bowl with the Giants that that was going to be it for him, that it was about the last year. Players were upset with him, and there was a ton of pressure on him,

and they didn't even have a great season. Throughout that year, he could have gotten canned, and they go to the playoffs. Eli Manning is crazy good, and they win a Super Bowl. But Coughlin, to his credit, that year was talked to by the players and did change. I guess my question with Mike is how much is Zim going to change? My gut feeling is not much, but yeah,

but if Zim finds God and decides, you know what, I'm going to be a free thinking, open-minded man towards the players and bring me all of the statistics you possibly can, then you're talking. But I don't see that as being Mike. I think Mike very much is out to prove that Mike's way is going to win. And in some ways he can win. Oh, yeah.

The whole thing of we're going to run, run, run, run, run, and a lot of people are like, whoa, dude, it's 2020, not so fast. And he's like, no. So the one thing with Coughlin was Coughlin was willing to really alter his personality and change for the betterment of his team and the players and I don't know it almost feels like Mike is going to be out to prove that Mike's way works which could be very intriguing and especially to your point if Talvin Cook says okay I'll show up but screw y'all, which is a possibility. It makes Zimmer enigmatic in some ways because he schematically is always finding solutions to problems and always changing. We saw this,

I mean, two years ago, 2018, we thought this defense is going to fall off the edge of a cliff and they end up being very good at the end of the year. And even last season where there were some bumps along the road, they finished fifth in points scored but then we see the stubborn Zim at times where yeah he is committed to running the ball I also believe that Gary knows what he's doing and that Stefanski knew what he was doing with how they were using that to set up the pass and you could see it on tape really well so let's not even focus too much on that that's not what Stefaniggs wanted, but they were still the 10th best offense in the league in points. They had a good year offensively. So maybe the best year offensively is, I mean, competitive with 2017 for how good they were under Zim. So I'm not going to say,

oh, well, he has no idea what he's doing when it comes to that. Because I think that play action off the run really works super well. And Kyle Shanahan does it all the time. Sean McVay does it all the time. So, you know, okay, I'm not going to go crazy with that. But somebody who has altered their approach at times with players where he said, I'm not going to evaluate them to you. And, you know, that's where he's gotten himself in trouble before with players. But then the John DeFilippo thing, thing I think still kind of reverberates not that

they had to fire him but the way it was handled and the you know the making it clear through the media that there were all these problems uh you know underneath the surface with a team that actually was winning some games when that came out because the first time he mentioned it was after a Jets game so it's like like, it sort of is, he understands that that's sort of his MO as a defensive mind is to always change and that he's gotten the hint that he can't go to the podium and hammer people like he probably wants to, or like Bill Parcells probably could in 1991. It just, you can't be that now as much with the attention on the NFL. I'm not sure that that's the part that really would have to change with Zimmer for them to be fully convinced. I think

that it's twofold. It would have to be a little more progressive approach, a little less foot in mouth when it comes to certain things where he could just avoid the question and he just decides to say it anyway. He made a very, very smart move with what he said to his players after George Floyd was killed. He said to his players, I've got your back when it comes to this stuff, but we're going to have to see it in action. He was not a part of anything that the team did when it came to their social efforts and things like that. So will he support them if they want to kneel before a game or if they want to have some sort of messaging or will he look at that as a distraction in the heat

of the moment? All these things I don't know. And then the other point of it is if they go eight and eight this year, that's fine. But would you look at it as, okay, I guess we kind of plateaued and maybe we should try something else there might be of all the complicated things that are behind the scenes with zimmer the front office the ownership and all the context required the simplest answer could possibly be the answer where you just say sometimes you tony dungy it in tampa bay where you take a team so far and then you need somebody else.

That does happen sometimes. But if that's the case, if that's how the Wilfs feel deep down, then the Wilfs should have made the move after the playoffs. And I know it would have been tough, but if your heart was set on, we're going to lose to the Saints and then Mike's going to go to Dallas and it's going to be fine. And then, oh my God, you beat the Saints and then play San Fran. And by the way, the Philadelphia game is a Zimmer embarrassment. Like, that laydown effort in the conference title game in 17 was awful.

The San Francisco game, you got your ass kicked. Like, you were not comparable. You weren't as good. But if your feeling as the Wilfs was, you know what, it's just time, then you've got to have the guts to make the move after that game. Because now we're sort of walking this tightrope and the kids, being players, don't know what mommy and daddy are going to be fighting about and it can be a lot of problems. If you had a coach, like if Stefanski was the guy, and I don't know, Kevin Stefanski

might be Lombardi, he might be Mike Pettin, I have no idea. But if Stefansky was your guy, then you should have made the change to him then because this feels very much like, Oh, we'll go back and do this, but we don't really want to. And the Wilfs have now hired three coaches, Childress, Frazier, great guy, nicest guy in the world and Zim. And I think the Wilfs feel that they want to empower headstrong coaches because Brad was a definite headstrong guy and Mike is too. But I also think that they grow tired of that

after a while and then they grow tired of the pushback and the my way or the highway. And so there's blame to go around here that definitely goes above Zim as well. But I do come back to the fact that if they had just decided that they were going to lose the Saints game and that was going to be it, then as weird as it would have seen after the Niners loss, they should have had the gall to make the change if that's their direction. But to the point of what you wrote, and it's very true, is you might be wrong, too. Like they could blow this thing up and Rick could go out and hire some 25-year-old offensive guru and it could be a mess. So this is in no way saying that Mike is not a good head coach.

He is. But if you've decided that this is it, this is a weird way to go about the last year, and I think it's counterproductive. Hey, before we get back to the conversation, I want to remind you that sports are coming back, and so are your chances to bet on your favorite teams and events. There's no better place to start than our exclusive partners, BetOnline. Get in on the action for this week's big UFC fight, or check out odds on NASCAR, Formula One, and the Premier League.

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Bottom line for me, Judd, is that what I've learned about our universe over the last six months or so is that half measures with almost everything are not the right direction. And for Mike, I think if you gave him the choice between twisting in the wind for an entire offseason and not being locked into for a long-term deal not having the ownership show their belief in him or just being let go and having a different job like that maybe in Dallas I think he would be the head coach in Dallas because Jerry Jones always regretted not hiring him because he did become a very, very good NFL head coach.

And maybe it would have been even better in Dallas with good quarterback play from Tony Romo and so forth and bringing a great defense there. But I think if you're Zimmer, you would say, I'd rather you just have let me go and let me get a new job for an organization that would lock into me for a five-year deal or a four-year deal then leave me just kind of hanging out here and potentially and i haven't heard this but this is my guess is that they've said well why don't we give you a one-year extension he's saying well no i'm not going to do that again either sign on with me or do not and from that perspective i

totally get it why zimmer would be quote irked because that that's not the half measure of just kind of hanging around you would almost have rather have seen them take the direction that Tennessee did when they hired Mike Vrabel Mike Malarkey won a playoff game and they were just like now we don't think this is going to keep happening because you kind of had to do it in random fashion and there's a lot of things that we just want to do differently now so goodbye here's Mike Vrabel that's how the world works sometimes but it seemed like you said that winning that playoff game they just felt like well we can't do it now because he just won the playoff game but if you're not convinced that he's going to keep winning playoff games and rebuild this defense to be great, which I think is a very reasonable possibility.

Does he have time, though? That's my question. Right. Are you going to give him time? I thought the one-year contract extension after 2018 was going to be the let's just find out now. And instead it's like, no, we'll go year to year again and in this league that to me doesn't make a ton of sense especially with a franchise in the Vikings that

they're all its faults and there's tons of faults uh but through all those faults the Wilfs have brought especially in the Zim Spielman era a pretty decent stability right oh yeah like for sure. Pretty stable. They're pretty well run. This seems to me to be a very half-assed way to do things when you've been doing a pretty good job for the last six years of figuring out and providing stability. It's odd. Yeah.

And now here's the other thing, too, is like there's all these situations of what do you do? And, again, let's just take COVID out of it. If you go 8-8, but you started slow, and at the end of the year, Jeff Gladney's great. Cam Dantzler's great. James Lynch is great. DJ Wanham is emerging. Are you going to say, well, sorry, Zim, you went 8-8, so goodbye, even though a bunch of your young defensive players started to show signs and that's why you won. And then you kind of end up putting yourself in a position for Zimmer to tell you to go bleep yourself.

Hey, good luck with all those players I just developed. And then he goes and gets a job. Right. That might happen. If Mike Zimmer is fired, he will have a job that offseason. Right. With this record, he is not going to have any time off, I think, that someone else will pick him up right away. So if you're going to decide not to have him on a

longer contract extension, you got to know you're going to be coaching against him at some point, and you don't know who's coming next. And one thing that PFF has found, and Eric Eager has mentioned this on the show before, I think, that the success of your defense, if you want to find sustainability, it usually has a lot to do with who's calling those plays, more than even the roster from year to year. It's who's calling the signals. And so your next guy, no guarantee they're going to be as good as your last guy when it comes to that. And that's where everybody is in a bit of a tricky situation here. But I agree that they've kind of put themselves in an unstable spot for a franchise that under Zimmer has become stable, despite a lot of things

that could have thrown them off. And who's the next guy too? Because a year ago, it was pretty clear that Stefanski was earmarked as that guy. I guess my question is, if Spielman's going to stick around, who is Spielman's next guy? And I'm guessing it's going to be offense. But again, with the way the Wilfs work and think and operate, and they are truly at-heart fans, I could see them thinking we'll convince Gary to take the job. And look, Gary and Gary's prime of coaching,

I would say bring it on. Great idea. I think now that's a stretch. I also think he doesn't want it. I really do. I think he can't do it. He doesn't want the OC job, right? Like you like doing the advisor, the offensive advisor role to Stefanski.

Yeah, so if Zim gets fired or walks, and I could see him easily walking away if he has a halfway decent year in 2020, I would not be surprised if the Cincinnati Bengals come call it and say, you coached here for a long time. You're good. Who's their coach? Is it Zach Taylor? Zach Taylor, yeah.

Who's sort of a young, up-and-coming but unknown. If things don't go well for the Bengals in 2020, I would not be surprised one bit. And Mike,'t go well for the Bengals in 2020 I would not be surprised one bit and Mike as dysfunctional as the Bengals are I think Mike would jump because he's an old guy and he's got that Kentucky farm and he would be like you know what I don't care I can be at my ranch all I want it is also a factor the Gary thing because my understanding of Gary and Zimmer is that these guys are just two peas in one footbally pod and they really like working with each other so if Mike goes then I think Gary goes too I think

that either Gary goes with him to wherever his next place is or Gary just says oh you know what man I've just had a good career out there and I'm gonna go back to my ranch I think that I think that those are are very good or I think they would I think they to go back to my ranch. I think that those are very good. But I think they would go to Gary and be like, do you want to coach this team? And they would think, oh, yeah, it's a football team. He'd love to coach them. I think Gary would say, you know what, dude, I'm 59. I'm near 60.

I will see you later. I don't need this. And Kirk Cousins is good, but Kirk Cousins does not justify sticking around. So that's the point. He's not the up-and-coming quarterback. But if you finally found the system, and I say finally, like one year you didn't have it, but you found what works for Kirk Cousins to have a really good season last year, I mean a top six quarterback by pro football focus, you get a quarterback to play like that.

You're in the playoffs. You've got a chance to win playoff games. Kirk gets hot, gets the right matchups. I mean, that puts you in the conversation when you've got the system right and you've got weapons that you've drafted that are young and developing and Adam Thielen is still in his prime

and Kyle Rudolph can still catch balls in the red zone and so forth. For 2021, I mean, it's important to mention you have a really great setup if Justin Jefferson even just gets his feet wet and shows something and then he's really good in year two you could be an excellent team overall in 2021 absolutely like that's on the table but then you would be talking about the potential of Freddy Kitchensing this thing and hire the wrong person and you end up with a great team that comes way short

of expectations and then the next year that's when Cousins cap hit explodes. So, I mean, they're really walking a tightrope here, I think. No, yeah, and to some degree, and this is the disturbing thing if you're a Vikings fan, it's self-induced. Like, I've got your three distractions for 2020 that you don't need. COVID, okay, that's there. You can't change that. Dalvin Cook, this is going to become a distraction and a problem.

And now, Zim's contract. So, like, those are three things. The COVID thing should be for every team. It's going to be the overriding pain in the ass. We don't know what's going to happen. Seasons might be cut short. Players certainly might get sick. But the Dalvin thing, that's a little bit more of a sticky,

wicked deal where I can go both ways there because I see the desire not to pay him long-term. I get that one. But that's a distraction, and now you're going to add potentially GM and coach. Like, those are things you don't need. And, again, this should not be a bad football team. I get the fact that we don't think they're going to add potentially GM and coach. Like those are things you don't need. And again, this should not be a bad football team. I get the fact that we don't think they're going to be great

and they probably won't be great, but there's an extra playoff spot, right? And there's going to be an opportunity for, this should be a playoff team. I don't know if they're going to win the division, but this should be a playoff team. But every one of those distractions I throw out makes it more difficult to be a playoff team because it's something else people are going to focus on instead of the games

themselves what would you know about covering Vikings teams with distractions Judd I don't know what you limit distractions limit just this is true in life and football limit your distractions you'll have more success life is filled with distractions don't create more i look forward to your self-help book of how to eliminate distractions and that could be my next career we all might have to have next careers if they don't play any football we'll see judd it is uh great to catch up with you. I've missed you. And we will do this again soon now that I know we can. I look forward to it, and I'm glad we can, Matthew Keller. Good talking to you.

You too.