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minny65 said:
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medaille said:
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StickyBun said:
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greediron said:
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medaille said:
I guess I struggle with the idea that the players didn’t give
a shit enough under the old coach and that a different coach is going to
dramatically change things. Also, the
Vikings defense had great communication in the first half of Zimmers tenure. I’d put more money on Zimmers defense
struggling when all the high priced, veteran players got injured, and you have
no depth because we were all in on rewarding the guys that got you there and
couldn’t afford quality backups. I have
no doubt that things were not good the last couple years, and am glad that
there’s a freshness in the air, but I’m guessing opinions change if at the end
of the year, we didn’t win a lot, and Kwesi axes half the veterans on the team
to build something more in his own vision.
Yeah, the new guy is popular until he isn't. Winning covers lots of ills. And under Zimmer, there were many newly minted millionaires.
lol, I'm not sure what this even means?
For a while the story under the Spielman/Zimmer era was that
the Vikings were a team that players wanted to go to. Zimmer was tough but fair and for players on the
defense, he was going to get the most out of you because he was one of the
brightest minds in the league. The
Vikings had great locker room chemistry.
Zimmer got the most out of a lot of players and they were rewarded with
big contracts earlier than a lot of other teams players. The Vikings spent heavily to keep their
homegrown talent.
I know that’s not the narrative now, but that’s what the
narrative was not too long ago. Now we’re
onto the narrative that all the blame goes to the people that aren’t here
anymore, and since everything was their fault that means we’re a shoe-in for
the SB, because everything still here is great.
Which is fine marketing, until they have to actually play a game, and
the things they aren’t good at start to become obvious. Hopefully, we’ll just be good at everything
and it won’t be an issue.
Yes that was the narrative under Zimmer as a DC guru and he fixed that immediately with the Vikings. But as an overall HC of the whole team that never happened. Then the last few years he wasn't even a defensive guru and literally became defensive when questioned and threw players under the bus....not a leader or HC material. It took the Wilf's and most fans a few years to realize that his peak was 4 seasons ago. Spelly's shipped was tied to him and it became so bad that they didn't even talk?, that is unacceptable for Spelly to tolerate that....he should have shit canned Zimmer years ago and I think if he did he would probably still be our GM but he did not make the right decision so he is also out of a job.
The narrative now it typical of bringing in a new GM and HC. I expect many hiccups because neither hire have a lot of experience. Kwesi showed his inexperience with his first draft decision and not getting better value. We will see a lot more hiccups from both him and KOC. But so far it has been so/so IMO.
Spielman wasn’t fired because of Zimmers bad attitude. He was fired because the organization was a
mess that he created. He had a defensive
coach that wanted to be a stifling defense with a ball control offense, and
when he did built the team in Zimmers mindset, Zimmer did well. Players were mostly happy. We were pretty much limited by our failures
on the OLine. When the OLine was good we’d
be around 10-6 or 11-5. When the OLine
was bad, we’d be closer to 8-8. Then
Spielman switched to all in on the offense and neglected our defense. He brought in an expensive, midlevel QB that
Zimmer didn’t want. He spent a ton on
Diggs who immediately forced his way out.
We spent a ton of draft capital on the OLine, often trying to replace
our only good OLine players with high draft picks but ignoring massive holes on
the interior. The few defenders he drafted
busted. Hughes was injured and never
really recovered. Gladney was troubled from
the get go and seems like something we should have saw coming. Dantzler is ok. We haven’t drafted a DLine player in the top
3 rounds since Hunter in 2015 until we drafted Jones II in 2021. The last two seasons we pretty much played without
a pass rush and without CBs, which guarantees your defense is going to be ineffective.
I think it’s not hard to imagine that Zimmer felt like his
coaching opportunity was being hamstrung by Spielman and that this would lead
to a toxic relationship. Obviously, we
all own our own behavior, and Zimmer should have behaved better, but Spielman
spent the last 4 years making a non-cohesive mess and that’s on him.
I do agree that Spielman probably would still have had a
job, if either continued to build a Zimmer style team with Zimmer as the coach
or hired an offensive-minded coach that was more in agreement with the direction
he wanted to take the team.
