Mr. Ed
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Disaster-control class was in session Tuesday afternoon, via cell phone from upstate New York to suburban Minneapolis. 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.
Zimmer and Parcells spoke twice Tuesday—Zimmer considers Parcells the closest thing to a pro football mentor that he has had—for a total of about 20 minutes. The first time was mid-afternoon when Zimmer didn’t know for certain the diagnosis of quarterback Teddy Bridgewater—and the fate of his Super Bowl-contending team, after Bridgewater went down without contact in a simple practice drill in Eden Prairie, Minn. But 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. “I don’t think this is one of them.”
The Vikings announced later Tuesday that the starting quarterback on this rising team suffered a torn ACL to his left knee “and other structural damage.” Bridgewater is out for the year. It will be a challenge for him to return healthy for the 2017 season. For now, the Vikings will troll the league for a veteran backup to support the current veteran backup Shaun Hill, now the starter. Hill will inspire confidence in no one. He’s a career backup, with a 16-18 record as a starter. In four of his past five NFL seasons, he hasn’t started a game. In the one recent year he did start—in St. Louis in 2014—he went 3-5. He is 36. But he’s what Minnesota has.
When I talked to the 75-year-old Parcells on Tuesday night, he replayed the classic no-one’s-going-to-feel-sorry-for-you shtick to me that he relayed to Zimmer a couple hours earlier.
It’s not the first time Parcells has used it with young coaches. It’s a credo he’s believes in strongly, because it’s worked with teams he’s coached.
“I told him, ‘The first thing you need to know is this: Everyone in the organization, and that includes some of the players and the coaches, are going to think they have an excuse now,” Parcells said. “Once the shock is over, probably 48 hours from now, they’re all gonna come to you and look at you and say, ‘What are you gonna do?’ Because you’re charged with winning games now, no matter what you have on your team. You need to figure out what works—what recipe works. And tomorrow morning, once the shock wears off, nobody’s gonna give a s---. It’s his problem. He’s gotta figure out how to win now.”
Parcells said he told Zimmer about his experience when Phil Simms went down for the Giants late in 1990 with a broken foot. Unproven backup Jeff Hostetler took over and led the Giants to an unlikely Super Bowl win over Buffalo.
“I went through this,” Parcells said. “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. Al Davis had some great advice for me once, and I told [Zimmer] this: You’re driving the train, and there’s 100 sets of eyes on you from behind. Players, coach, front office. They’re all screaming, ‘You gotta do something! What are you gonna do?’ And you’re going to have to figure it out.”
That’s the big question around Minnesota. With Bridgewater, the Vikings were peers with Green Bay atop the NFC North. What are they now? Who are they now? Zimmer has to wake up this morning and figure out a way to beat Tennessee in 11 days. That’s all that matters.
I asked Parcells: “How do you think Zimmer will respond?”
Parcells said: “Like he is as a man: Resolute. Determined.”
The Vikings seasons depends on it.
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Escape while you can!
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