Somewhere in a bar in rural Minnesota, a man named Blair Anderson is having a beer. Scrolling through his phone to avoid people, he comes across an article in the Minnesota Star Tribune where former Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer went scorched earth on everyone from Rick Spielman to Kris Boyd.
Filled with anger, Anderson smashes his bottle of Grain Belt Premium against the bar.
“Nobody talks about my football team that way!” Anderson screams as blood streams down his hand. “Mike Zimmer, your a– is grass!”
Anderson’s feelings are similar to many fans’. In an interview with the Star Tribune’s Mark Craig, Zimmer blamed everyone except himself for Minnesota’s failures late in his tenure. However, the article represents something a little more, making Zimmer the Vikings’ version of CM Punk.
In case you don’t speak wrestling, we should explain. CM Punk is one of the most popular professional wrestlers of all time, thanks to his tendency to say what’s on his mind. One of the biggest examples was his infamous “Pipe Bomb” promo in 2011. In it, he trashed the state of World Wrestling Entertainment and suggested that the company would be better off if Vince McMahon were dead.
The promo was controversial but sent Punk into a new dimension of stardom. Punk held the WWE Championship for 434 days. However, his real-life issues with the company, including broken promises by management, forced him to walk out in January 2014.
Punk’s rise to stardom is somewhat similar to Zimmer’s. The star of Hard Knocks in 2009 and 2013, Zimmer was the fire-breathing defensive coordinator behind Cincinnati’s top-10 defense through the late 2000s and early 2010s. While Zimmer’s resumé was solid and included a tie to the Bill Parcells coaching tree, Zimmer didn’t get a head coaching job due to his candid demeanor. However, when the Vikings fired Leslie Frazier after the 2013 season, they deemed Zimmer the right person for the job.
The first four years of Zimmer’s tenure went well. The Vikings were competitive despite losing Adrian Peterson to a suspension in 2014 and won the NFC North in 2015. The 2016 team went sideways after Teddy Bridgewater suffered a major leg injury in practice, but Zimmer rebounded to lead Minnesota to the NFC Championship game in 2017. (We will not discuss what happened there.)
However, things changed during the second act of his tenure. Zimmer warned the team against signing Kirk Cousins in free agency. Still, the Vikings did it anyway, and the team limped to an 8-7-1 record in 2018 before going 10-6 in 2019.
Zimmer admitted in Craig’s article that his welcome was wearing out during a Wild Card playoff game against the New Orleans Saints. However, everyone got new contracts after an aggressive defensive game plan, a $200 million throw by Cousins to Adam Thielen, and a push-off by Kyle Rudolph in the end zone.
That set the Vikings franchise back several years. They released Xavier Rhodes and Linval Joseph as they tried to spur a youth movement on defense with Cameron Dantzler and Jeff Gladney. However, Zimmer never adapted, and Minnesota ended a 7-9 season by allowing Alvin Kamara to run for six touchdowns on Christmas Day.
Tensions reached a fever pitch in 2021. Zimmer walked out of the war room when Spielman drafted Kellen Mond in the third round and metaphorically put him into the broom closet at TCO Performance Center. The Vikings got off to a shaky start on the field, and most players went into “every man for himself” mode as they headed to Green Bay.
Stuck in a must-win situation, Cousins tested positive for COVID-19, an event that Zimmer saw coming back in training camp. He put Mond on the field in the fourth quarter of the loss to the Packers and buried him in the postgame press conference. When he returned for a conference call with the Wilf family, he received an ominous hint at his future.
“Rick didn’t want me to ask the question, but I did,” Zimmer said. “I said, ‘What about me? What’s my status at the end of the season?’ And Mark [Wilf] said, ‘We’re evaluating.’”
Zimmer showcased his pettiness in the final game of the season. He coached like he was trying to win the Super Bowl. He ignored a chance to help Justin Jefferson set a franchise record for most receiving yards in a season and doubled down in the postgame press conference.
It was clear the Vikings needed to make a change. Still, that didn’t stop Zimmer from storming out of TCO Performance Center after they fired him.
“They asked me if I wanted to address the team, and I said, ‘Hell, no. They got me fired!’” Zimmer said. “I didn’t know I was supposed to go to HR and sign out or whatever. No one told me. I just got all my stuff, got in my truck, and left.”
Zimmer retreated to his ranch and burned bridges with everyone from play-by-play announcer Paul Allen to former pupil Terence Newman. He was bitter with everyone over how things ended. It’s how most fans remembered Zimmer before he confirmed it in the interview with Craig, which turned out to be his version of the “Pipe Bomb” promo.
But while Zimmer had his share of candid moments, he had more hits than misses. Zimmer developed many players considered Ring of Honor candidates, including Harrison Smith, Anthony Barr, and Everson Griffen. The defense, which ranked last with 480 points allowed in 2013, climbed to first with 252 points allowed in 2017.
Some Vikings fans may also mention how the Philadelphia Eagles torched Zimmer’s defense in the 38-7 NFC Championship Game loss in 2017 and went completely belly-up in the 2020 season. However, it’s not like Denny Green didn’t lose two NFC Championship Games, one of them by a score of 41-0. Bud Grant lost four Super Bowls.
Zimmer is third in Vikings history in coaching victories and winning percentage during his tenure. Although it ended poorly, you can make a case that he could be inducted into the Ring of Honor someday.
That’s where CM Punk compares most to Zimmer. Punk’s bitterness kept him out of professional wrestling for nearly a decade before he returned to All Elite Wrestling in 2021. A series of backstage altercations got him fired from AEW in 2023. Still, a few months later, he returned to WWE in an event wrestling fans likened to hell freezing over.
Just like wrestling fans upset over Punk’s decision to walk out, Vikings fans have become angry with Zimmer for holding on to his grudges against the one organization that allowed him to become a head coach.
It could create his own “hell frozen over moment” where Zimmer returns to U.S. Bank Stadium and takes his spot in the Vikings Ring of Honor, but his anger towards the franchise signals it may never happen. It’s an unfortunate development for someone who has played an important role in the Vikings’ history and tarnishes the opinion of fans who now believe he had no impact at all.
