A GHOULISH DEBACLE

COWBOYS 20

VIKINGS 16

On Halloween Night 2021 we may have seen the burial of the Mike Zimmer era of Vikings football.

What a debacle. What a fiasco. What a gross, unforgivable display of deliberate incompetence. And all in front of a national TV audience (and WAY too many annoying Dallas fans at the purple palace). 

With two weeks to prepare, facing a team without its starting quarterback, at home and largely healthy going in...this is what the Minnesota Vikings put forth?

But, as is so often the case, it wasn't bad at the start. We take the ball first, and roll right down the field to an easy touchdown. Same thing as the Cleveland game. And then, just like that game, the offense was comatose after that. 

After a whole week of drama about who would start at QB for Dallas, it turned out to be green backup Cooper Rush. And he did get Dallas into field goal range on their opening drive. But Greg Zuerlein missed the kick. Okay, so let's keep rolling.

But the offense never rolled. They had one other shot in the first half, when a busted coverage left JJ wide open down the sideline, but he for some reason slowed up and Kirk's throw didn't connect.

The offense just bogged down in needlessly conservative play calling after that. Coupled with awful run blocking, they couldn't sustain drives at all (1 3rd down conversion all night). The only reason they even managed to score any more 1st half points is because Zimmer got a little gutsy and went for a 4th and 1 at his own 44 and Kirk went downfield to Thielen and set up an eventual field goal. And even THAT moment only occurred because Dallas was offsides on a punt a few plays earlier. It was just disgusting offense.

Then there was the awful sequence to end the half, when admittedly we had long odds to get in scoring position but we let the clock run out without even using the last timeout. Once again the Vikings offense was being booed at home. Third straight home game that's happened.

We led 10-3 but it felt like we were losing. Our offense stunk. Game management was bad. Our defense only had surrendered 3 points, and had picked off Rush (should have been 2 but Dantzler let a gift pick hit the ground), but we were letting them sustain drives.

The gross 1st half immediately bit the Vikings when on the 3rd play after halftime Rush hit Cedrick Wilson in stride down the middle, who outran everybody for a 73 yard game tying touchdown. That's what you get for refusing to even try to put your boot on the neck of an undermanned team. Eventually one of the Cowboys many playmakers is gonna beat you. 

Nothing changed. No adjustments. No attempts to go after a weak Dallas secondary. We scratched out another field goal, but that was soon matched. I spent the whole 2nd half mad at what I was watching, and waiting for the loss that was feeling inevitable.

Anthony Barr recovered a fumble near midfield. We did nothing with it. CeeDee Lamb dropped a 3rd down slant that might have gone for a touchdown.

We finally got a drive going in the back half of the 4th, although even here we needed a couple big penalties to push them along (an iffy RTP call, and a couple legit personal fouls). Then after getting to 1st and goal we run 3 plays. None of them were targeted at the endzone. 2 of them LOST yardage. Settling for a field goal here felt like nothing more than a setup for a crushing loss. This offense was just incapable of doing its job. 

What happened next felt predestined. I mean, we let Sam Darnold go 96 on us 2 weeks ago. Rush only needed 75. 

We get the Immaculate Deflection Part 2, where somehow Breeland bobbles an interception into the hands of Amari Cooper for a 33 yard gain. Almost immediate field goal range. Then Cooper catches another one for 18.

We at least get them into 3rd and long, but Zimmer tries to call back to back timeouts and we give 5 yards back. Then a short throw to Ezekiel Elliott, with FOUR Vikings between him and the sticks, becomes a dagger first down when we can't make a simple tackle.

I mean, there is zero doubt that Dallas seals the deal here, and they did easily with a simple pitch and catch to Cooper over Dantzler.

A last ditch drive basically went nowhere and that was that. A disastrous night of football was complete, and the Vikings had blown a golden opportunity to assert themselves in the NFC playoff picture. 

Had this loss occurred in a shootout, even with Rush, I could have stomached that. Dallas is not only Dak Prescott. They have a lot of good players, and if they burn you, that happens. I would have accepted allowing 20 points any day.

The 16 is what infuriates me. The 16 is what I find completely unacceptable.

This game felt like the offensive gameplan was designed specifically to lose. Not even to be conservative, but to lose. It was madness. Klint Kubiak is a failure as an OC. Even as bad as John Defilippo was in 2018, he never had a game quite this wretched. And he never had an offensive line that was functional. That's what I find so inexplicable right now. This OL has not been that bad at protecting Kirk, other than the Browns game. The 2nd half on Sunday night the line let some pressure in, but overall the protection was adequate enough to do more than call for dumpoffs and these insufferable WR screens that Kubiak has dialed up like 30 times this season and never with success. Being at the game you can really tell on a lot of these plays that they aren't even sending guys more than 10 yards down the field. And what does that do? It bunches up the defense so there are no throwing lanes, no open receivers, and any catches that ARE made result in immediate tackles. 

You have Justin Jefferson, Adam Thielen, KJ Osborn and Dalvin Cook and you can't move the ball because Kubiak is treating these players like scrubs. Oh, and you also have a really fucking good quarterback who has been playing some of the best football of his career in 2021 and the response has been to rein him in and neuter him. (Although the Kirk Cousins Derangement Syndrome crowd blamed him for this, cause of course). What happened on Sunday night was gross coaching negligence.

Here's where it hurts. I blame Kubiak for his terrible approach, but Mike Zimmer is allowing Kubiak to do this shit. So if Zimmer lets this happen then one must conclude that Zimmer is fine with this. That Zimmer is fine with Klint Kubiak treating some elite offensive weapons as trash. Dallas had an inexperienced backup QB in there but was able or at least willing to dial up plays to take advantage of their personnel. Kubiak refused, and Zimmer let him.

I have staunchly defended Mike Zimmer for years. His tenure here has been better than many will admit. He has squeezed just about every win out of this team that he could since 2014, even in the face of an inordinate amount of misfortune (major injuries, kicker meltdowns, AP suspension, inexplicable regression by guys like Rhodes, etc.). Even last year I give him a ton of credit for managing to pull 7 wins out of a decimated roster. 

But after this....I no longer feel Zimmer is doing that. For the first time since he was hired I feel like Zimmer is a negative for this team. His revamped defense has largely played pretty well, although here we go again with injuries (we lost Hunter for the year last night). And even before injuries we have had trouble putting games on lock.

And the offensive woes at this point have to go on him too. There is a line between being conservative by nature (which is often the smart play, sorry) and actively hurting the team by just never trying to do anything.

Can anything change? Zimmer is set in his ways, but I think honestly his only hope to save his job beyond this season now is to change his approach to what he wants week in, week out from this team. Maybe the Hunter injury and inevitable defensive struggles ahead will force his hand.. This can't continue, though. 

I am not flat out calling for Zimmer to be fired. I'm not part of that crowd. I respect Zimmer and what he has done here too much to demand he be sent packing in the middle of a season. I'm not even sure what a coaching change right now really does to expand the possibilities of the 2021 Vikings. We're not catching the Packers. The best we can hope for is probably grabbing that 7th seed, which I certainly still think we could get. But what does that even mean now? I can't honestly say that I hold out hope anymore that this team could be dangerous in any playoff matchup. You can't rely on this coaching staff to maximize what this personnel is. 

I think I am ready to bid Mike Zimmer farewell after this season.