11-10-2019, 05:33 PM
Mike Zimmer smirks now, when told Darren Woodson has brought out the Michael Irvin story again — “He likes to tell that story all the time,” Zimmer said this week — and the details have gotten a little fuzzy in Woodson’s many recollections of it.
The impression Zimmer made on Woodson that day in Candlestick Park is as sharp now, almost 25 years later, as the day Zimmer went toe-to-toe with Irvin.
The Cowboys and 49ers were playing during the peak of their rivalry in 1994; Woodson believes (though not with complete certainty) it was during their regular-season game that November rather than the NFC Championship Game. Jerry Rice caught a long pass over Cowboys cornerback Larry Brown, and Irvin stormed down the sideline arguing Dallas needed to double-cover Rice.
Irvin was quickly told by a first-year assistant defensive backs coach where he could stick it.
“[Mike] and Michael Irvin got into the biggest argument — like, fisticuffs,” said former Cowboys safety Darren Woodson, who made five Pro Bowls in his 13 seasons with the team. “This speaks directly to who he is: This is his first year. We’re a team that’s gone back-to-back Super Bowls. One of the best wide receivers in the history of the game is upset about something, and Zim is not backing down. The youngest guy on the coaching staff. That was the type of thing that earned so much respect from the players: You knew he was going to go to war for you — period.”
As much as Zimmer’s 13 years in Dallas molded him into a future NFL head coach, the impression he left on the Cowboys still lingers at the highest levels of the organization. Luminaries from the Super Bowl teams of the 1990s, such as Woodson and Deion Sanders, still revere Zimmer for the ways his candor and attention to detail made them better. Former coach Bill Parcells remains one of Zimmer’s closest confidants from their four seasons working together.
Zimmer and his son Adam (the Vikings’ linebackers coach) have gone on hunting excursions for years on Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ land, and Jones said this week Mike Zimmer maintains “as good and close a friendship as anybody I know of” with his son Stephen, who runs much of the Cowboys’ football operation as their CEO.
“I enjoy the fact he’s got football in his blood and hunting in his heart,” Jerry Jones said. “That’s created quite a kinship.”
At the start of a phone interview about Zimmer’s time in Dallas this week, Jones cheerily greeted a reporter by saying, “You’re calling about one of my favorite people.” He later said, “I don’t have anyone — whether it be the NFL or other relationships that I have in other things outside the NFL — I have no one that stands any higher than Mike Zimmer.”
Not hiring Zimmer as the Cowboys’ coach when he had the chance, Jones says now, “was a miss on my part.”
http://www.startribune.com/dallas-will-a...564708911/
The impression Zimmer made on Woodson that day in Candlestick Park is as sharp now, almost 25 years later, as the day Zimmer went toe-to-toe with Irvin.
The Cowboys and 49ers were playing during the peak of their rivalry in 1994; Woodson believes (though not with complete certainty) it was during their regular-season game that November rather than the NFC Championship Game. Jerry Rice caught a long pass over Cowboys cornerback Larry Brown, and Irvin stormed down the sideline arguing Dallas needed to double-cover Rice.
Irvin was quickly told by a first-year assistant defensive backs coach where he could stick it.
“[Mike] and Michael Irvin got into the biggest argument — like, fisticuffs,” said former Cowboys safety Darren Woodson, who made five Pro Bowls in his 13 seasons with the team. “This speaks directly to who he is: This is his first year. We’re a team that’s gone back-to-back Super Bowls. One of the best wide receivers in the history of the game is upset about something, and Zim is not backing down. The youngest guy on the coaching staff. That was the type of thing that earned so much respect from the players: You knew he was going to go to war for you — period.”
As much as Zimmer’s 13 years in Dallas molded him into a future NFL head coach, the impression he left on the Cowboys still lingers at the highest levels of the organization. Luminaries from the Super Bowl teams of the 1990s, such as Woodson and Deion Sanders, still revere Zimmer for the ways his candor and attention to detail made them better. Former coach Bill Parcells remains one of Zimmer’s closest confidants from their four seasons working together.
Zimmer and his son Adam (the Vikings’ linebackers coach) have gone on hunting excursions for years on Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ land, and Jones said this week Mike Zimmer maintains “as good and close a friendship as anybody I know of” with his son Stephen, who runs much of the Cowboys’ football operation as their CEO.
“I enjoy the fact he’s got football in his blood and hunting in his heart,” Jerry Jones said. “That’s created quite a kinship.”
At the start of a phone interview about Zimmer’s time in Dallas this week, Jones cheerily greeted a reporter by saying, “You’re calling about one of my favorite people.” He later said, “I don’t have anyone — whether it be the NFL or other relationships that I have in other things outside the NFL — I have no one that stands any higher than Mike Zimmer.”
Not hiring Zimmer as the Cowboys’ coach when he had the chance, Jones says now, “was a miss on my part.”
http://www.startribune.com/dallas-will-a...564708911/