Teddy Bridgewater’s non-contact ACL tear, which will require “significant” recovery time, has put Vikings Nation into a panic, led national pundits to declare the team’s Super Bowl hopes dashed and motivated head coach Mike Zimmer to call his mentor, Bill Parcells, for advice.
“Disaster-control class was in session Tuesday afternoon, via cell phone from upstate New York to suburban Minneapolis,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Peter King on The MMQB.
“The instructor, Bill Parcells, was reminding the student, Mike Zimmer, what he learned in his long apprenticeship as an NFL assistant, including the four seasons Zimmer worked under Parcells in Dallas a decade ago.”
According to King, Parcells and Zimmer spoke twice on Tuesday for a total of 20 minutes. When they talked later in the afternoon, Zimmer had a pretty good idea that the injury suffered by Bridgewater was season-ending.
“There are situations that won’t allow you to succeed,” Parcells told Zimmer, according to King. “I don’t think this is one of them.”
King talked to Parcells on Tuesday night, and the 75-year-old former head coach said that he reminded Zimmer that Phil Simms went down when he was coaching the New York Giants late in 1990 with a broken foot. The Giants ended up beating the Buffalo Bills to win the Super Bowl that year.
“I went through this,” Parcells told Zimmer, according to King.
“We had a backup quarterback who was unproven, Jeff Hostetler, and I remember vividly hearing all the experts then say, ‘No one’s ever won the Super Bowl with such an unproven guy.’ I said to my players, ‘We are not losing because we’re playing Jeff Hostetler. I guarantee you that.’ There were ways to win those games, and it was up to us to figure them out.
“There are ways to win these games. [Zimmer] has a good running game. You know he can coach defense, and they’ve got a good defense.”
[Sports Illustrated]
