Vikings Head Coach Mike Zimmer spoke to the media Wednesday regarding his thoughts on team practice so far as well as the progression of a few players like Jerick McKinnon, Shariff Floyd, and Jerome Simpson among others.
When asked about getting the football to his big offensive playmakers, Zimmer expressed the faith and confidence he has in his OC Norv Turner. “One of the great things about Norv is he understands who’s the guy to get the ball to, number one,” Zimmer said. “When I’ve played him in the past, he’s always figured out who they’re trying to take away and then counter that. We want to be explosive down the field, but in saying that it opens up a lot of spaces for other people, for the running backs, for the tight ends as you’ve seen in a lot of his offenses in the past. He has a lot of different things for the defense to practice against and offensively, we are putting a lot of stuff in, we’re giving them a lot of things to kind of figure out, alright what can these guys do good and give them a big, broad picture, then we will narrow it down to what we feel like we do best for our players and for the quarterbacks and for Adrian (Peterson) obviously.”
Zimmer also expressed that the speed of newly signed RB Jerick McKinnon could turn out to compliment Adrian Peterson’s running style quite nicely. He said, “Jerick is doing a good job. We are using him in a lot of different situations, he catches the ball well, he has excellent acceleration coming out of the backfield, he’s learning the run reads better now. We’re glad we have him, he’s a good change of pace back, I mean not that Adrian is a slow guy, because he is obviously extremely fast, but just a different kind of back.”
Other players who’ve also been impressing Zimmer include former Seminole CB Xavier Rhodes and former Gator DT Sharrif Floyd. He gives the secondary coach Jerry Gray a lot of credit for Rhodes’s progress thus far. “Xavier, I’ve been impressed with him, he’s working very, very hard,” Zimmer said. “He’s a good kid. We have been working on his technique quite a bit, I’ve talked to him several times about things out here in the field, and he wants to be really good. Jerry Gray is doing a hell of a job coaching him, actually, he’s doing a great job coaching all of those DBs. It’s actually impressive to me, because us being from different places, he’s to the point now where he can correct them before I can get to them, so that’s a good thing. But going back to Xavier, he has got great acceleration, he’s learning the techniques much better, he’s staying on point much better. The thing I’m impressed with, the things that we talk about, he needs to improve the next day he’s working on it. We’ll go in the meeting room here in a minute and we’ll talk about the next process to where he is going, but I’m excited about him, he’s doing well.”
As for Sharrif Floyd, Zimmer has high hopes for him in his second year with Minnesota. “Sharrif is doing a great job,” he said. “He’s improved tremendously; he’s using his hands well. He’s a very dedicated kid. He’s done a great job in the weight room as far as changing his body and his strength levels and he shows great quickness. We’re very, very excited to have him and I look forward to having him have a good year.”
Zimmer also commented on WR Jerome Simpson, who spent four years with the Cincinnati Bengals before coming to Minnesota. Zimmer felt that Simpson’s time with the Bengals offense has put him ahead of the curve with the Vikings game plan. “Jerome has always been a great athlete,” he said. “He can run like crazy, he’s catching the ball well. When he was in Cincinnati the first few years, he was basically in this same type of offense and so he has a little bit better of a grasp than some of the guys, just having a little background in it, but he’s a guy that can stretch the field, he’s doing a lot of good things.”
Coach Zimmer was asked how his players might feel in regards to his “hands on” coaching style and whether it’s intimidating to them or not. “You’d have to ask them that,” he said. “I don’t think it’s intimidating, I’m coaching. I think they like to be coached. I probably answered the question wrong last time, about what they think. I hope they think that I’m an expert at what I do and what I’ve done and the techniques that I’m teaching, so I’m hoping and hopeful that they are paying attention to it and trying their very hardest to accomplish the things that we are trying to accomplish. I do think that we have improved quite a bit defensively in these eight practices; I think we have improved quite a bit. We’re not anywhere near where we need to be, but I feel like we are playing the coverage tighter, I feel like we have some guys up front that can do a nice job up front rushing the quarterback, we will have to be able to stop the run, which is hard to tell right now not in the pads. We seem to be fitting things pretty well and they’re giving great effort. Actually, both sides of the ball I feel like are giving great effort and are really busting their rear-ends.”
