Mike Zimmer was fired by Vikings ownership on Monday, one day after a meaningless win over a Bears team playing out a nearly identical lame-duck coaching situation. Zimmer left with the third-most wins in Vikings history, going 72-56-1 in eight regular seasons, plus 2-3 in the playoffs.

Stuck in a liminal zone between good enough and great as a head coach, there’s no arguing that Zimmer is one of the most influential defensive minds in modern football. That influence bore out in Minnesota: The Vikings had the NFL’s top defense by points allowed in 2017, and the second-best by points allowed over a five-year stretch (2015 to 2019). By a play-by-play measure like expected points, they looked just as impressive — second-best in 2017 and No. 1 in that five-year span.

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In that time, Zimmer was flexible, switching coverage shells from Cover 3 to Cover 4 to Cover 2 and switching fronts from his favored double-A gap look to other crowded fronts with linebackers in other gaps — sometimes even tripling the A gap to confuse centers and backs. It worked, especially on third down.

His most popular principles spread across the NFL — from deploying similarly confusing fronts to modifying the popular Seattle Cover-3 system to be flexible in ways that reflected the Zimmer philosophy. His approach to coverage and pass rush will likely stick around the league for some time.

So, how did it collapse? The Minnesota defense didn’t experience a gradual fall: The 2018 and 2019 Vikings combined for the fourth-best EPA overall among defenses, never ranking outside of the top seven in EPA and staying within the top six for total points allowed.

Then, in 2020, the bottom fell out. The Vikings ranked in the bottom third of the league in almost every defensive metric. They rebounded in a small way without much flair in 2021, but minus the reliability and consistency that marked the previous Zimmer defenses.

The defense the Vikings put together in 2017 was a major selling point to Kirk Cousins and the reason Minnesota felt comfortable going all-in on a quarterback. Having a top-10 offense with a top-three defense certainly feels like a way to punch one’s ticket to the playoffs every year, with some championship games sprinkled in. Instead, the Vikings were only able to pair top-level units once in the past four years, in 2019.

As the offense stabilized, the defense fell off. And that, along with a host of other factors, spelled the end for a defensive coaching legend.

The seeds of that defensive drop-off came as Cousins arrived, in the 2018 offseason. In free agency, the Vikings didn’t do much outside of the Cousins signing. They re-signed cornerback Terence Newman and defensive tackle Tom Johnson to one-year deals, while also adding safety George Iloka. The most impactful defensive signing was Sheldon Richardson, another one-year deal, this one worth $8 million.

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The bigger problem was that the Vikings underperformed in the draft. They selected cornerback Mike Hughes in the 2018 first round, anticipating they wouldn’t have the cap space to hold on to Trae Waynes in 2020. Then they drafted three more defensive players: defensive ends Jalyn Holmes (fourth round) and Ade Aruna (sixth round), plus linebacker Devante Downs (seventh round). None remains on the roster, and Hughes played few snaps for the Vikings before being traded to Kansas City in May 2021.

They didn’t make much of a splash in 2019 free agency, either. The Vikings spent big to bring back defensive tackle Shamar Stephen, who earned a three-year deal worth $12.5 million. Stephen had spent four seasons with Minnesota before joining Seattle in 2018 on a one-year deal. The Vikings also re-signed linebacker Anthony Barr to a five-year, $67.5 million contract.

Stephen had the second-lowest pressure rate among qualifying defensive tackles over the next two years, with only the Vikings’ 2017 draft pick Jaleel Johnson behind him. Of course, Stephen was signed to be a nose tackle, with Zimmer declaring that Stephen was “as good a nose as there is.” That proclamation — and insistence that Stephen was responsible for linebacker Eric Kendricks’ uptick in play — didn’t do much for Stephen when the guaranteed money on his contract ran out; the Vikings cut him and let him seek greener pastures.

The 2019 draft class wasn’t much better, though it did provide the Vikings with an improved defensive tackle in Armon Watts. The other defensive picks — linebacker Cameron Smith, safety Marcus Epps and cornerback Kris Boyd — either failed to make the roster or serve as worrisome depth.

The Vikings didn’t feel the impact of those two lackluster defensive drafts in 2019, thanks to their impressive retention of their defensive starters. They lost just one or two each year following Zimmer’s arrival in 2014. The core — defensive linemen Everson Griffen, Linval Joseph and Danielle Hunter; linebackers Kendricks and Barr; cornerbacks Waynes and Xavier Rhodes; and safety Harrison Smith — remained year after year.

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But the cost of retention was high. The 2019 cap hit for those eight players totaled $75.8 million, when the Vikings had only had $191 million in cap space with which to work. They would have even less wiggle room in the future as Cousins’ cap price increased. Five of those eight core players hit free agency in 2020, and the Vikings retained none of them.

Instead, for 2020, the Vikings relied on those draft and free-agent acquisitions to fill the three holes at cornerback, both defensive tackle spots (Richardson had left for Cleveland), one of the defensive end spots and a hole at safety. They resolved the safety issue by franchise-tagging Anthony Harris, but they needed the 2018, 2019 and 2020 draft picks to step up at other spots.

Vikings Defensive Draft Picks

In the meantime, after failing to find a defensive tackle in the draft, they signed a behemoth from Baltimore in Michael Pierce. Theoretically, he would replace Joseph and shore up the run game.

Unfortunately, Pierce opted out of the season due to COVID-19. On top of that, the 2020 draft selections couldn’t supplement the weak 2018 and 2019 defensive classes, despite the fact Minnesota had 15 picks, a seven-round record.

Jeff Gladney and Cameron Dantzler weren’t ready to play cornerback in Zimmer’s complex system, and neither was Harrison Hand. D.J. Wonnum certainly didn’t have the chops to replace Griffen and Kenny Willekes didn’t show much in camp before getting injured. On the interior, James Lynch was still transitioning to defensive tackle after playing end in college. Troy Dye, a linebacker, couldn’t beat out waiver acquisitions Todd Davis and Ryan Connelly.

Zimmer’s complex system made for easy-to-foresee problems during the regular season, namely coverage busts from the new cornerback group and technique issues creating space for receivers. Throughout the 2020 offseason, Zimmer insisted that the defense didn’t need to be simplified for the young cornerbacks, all of whom had three or fewer years of NFL experience. In early August 2020, he said: “We’ll get them up to speed fast enough and I think we’ll be fine.”

The confidence he had in that cornerback group matched the confidence he had in his own abilities. While generally well-earned, it could blind him, too. In an August 2020 interview with NFL Network, Zimmer said: “I’ve never had a bad defense, ever. I don’t anticipate that changing.”

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Then Aaron Rodgers put up 43 points against the Vikings in Week 1. Zimmer, forced to change his tune, had to scrap the offseason install and improvise a safer, simpler defense. The Vikings were forced to play catch-up for the rest of the season, and by December, Zimmer was forced to walk back his summer statement.

“Yeah, this is a bad defense,” he said. “Worst one I’ve ever had.”

The Vikings finished 7-9.

It was simply too much to expect a defense to maintain its pace after experiencing massive roster turnover, especially when continuity was a big factor in its impressive performance. That defense had already started out fairly complex in 2014 but added layers with every game — the defenders absorbed additional rule sets for each new offensive nuance and adopted their own communication style.

In short, the veterans were all speaking Greek, ready to discuss “The Iliad” in its original language. The rookies struggled to pick up the Greek alphabet. And Zimmer didn’t see the problem.

But misplaced confidence expressed itself in other ways, too. It’s not just that the Vikings felt secure enough in their defensive back coaching to let all three starting corners walk. They also felt so strongly about their defensive line coaching that they never invested significant resources in a replacement for Griffen.

The Vikings didn’t invest a Day 1 or 2 pick in a front-seven player in the five years after drafting Hunter, finally breaking that streak in 2021 by selecting Patrick Jones II and Chazz Surratt in the third round. Instead, they trusted their ability to develop defensive linemen, hoping to replicate the success stories they had with Hunter, Griffen, Brian Robison and Ray Edwards — all players picked after the second round and developed in-house.

The team all but openly invited comparisons between Wonnum and Hunter, both of whom have similar frames. But as athletes, they aren’t comparable. Hunter dominated the NFL combine testing process; Wonnum was fairly average compared to his peers. He profiled most similarly to Sam Montgomery and Noah Spence coming out of the draft.

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Though Wonnum ended up as the Vikings’ sack leader this season, the performance was similar to Bud Dupree’s breakout 2019 or Vic Beasley’s 15 1/2-sack 2016 — cleanup sacks, without much individual work on his part to earn the pressure. Wonnum’s pass-rush win rate is among the lowest in the league and his Pro Football Focus grade, which ranks 93rd in pass-rush score, reflects that. And it’s not just a simple product of weird grading systems; Wonnum didn’t earn much praise from Zimmer aside from noting his potential. Outside film analysts concur.

Brandon Thorn, an offensive and defensive line specialist, gave Wonnum a “True Sack Rate” score of 4.0. In his process, he evaluates every sack a player puts on film and categorizes them as Rare High Quality, High Quality, Low Quality and Cleanup/Coverage. More difficult tasks earn more points. Wonnum’s score ranks 50th, tied with four other players. More damning, he doesn’t have any High Quality sacks.

All of this is to say that Wonnum didn’t create positive plays when the Vikings needed them. Instead, he benefited from the positive plays of others. And on a defense premised on forcing quarterbacks to hurry their reads and play amid confusion, that didn’t work. Backup-level play isn’t enough to spur the Vikings forward. Minnesota’s defensive line is littered with those kinds of players.

But poor draft evaluation and arrogance weren’t the only things that doomed the Vikings. The approach the front office took to roster building, one Zimmer wasn’t particularly fond of, also hurt them. When asked about the depth on defense before this season, Zimmer responded with concern. “I feel really good about the top guys, and then some of these young guys got to come on,” he said. “But when you’re kind of top-heavy with finances, that’s what you’ve got to do. Hopefully, we’ll stay healthy, and try to get these younger guys better.”

The Vikings indeed were top-heavy, though some of that had to do with big investments at defensive tackle with Pierce and Dalvin Tomlinson, a one-year contract for legendary cornerback Patrick Peterson as well as re-signing Hunter. But Zimmer also chafed at the Cousins signing, a concern he had in 2018, per The Athletic’s Chad Graff.

That made the Vikings’ approach to the 2021 draft all the more baffling. They took an extremely long-term view, drafting project players in nearly every round. It was astounding that a team critically lacking depth would functionally punt on an opportunity to draft players who could contribute more quickly.

That wouldn’t have mattered so much if not for a fourth problem — injuries. In 2020, the Vikings suffered season-ending injuries to Barr, Hunter, Hughes and Holton Hill (in addition to Pierce’s COVID-19 opt-out). Dantzler also missed several games due to injury; Kendricks sat out the final five games, as well. Overall, Minnesota lost the third-most games to injury on defense in the NFL.

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In 2021, the Vikings lost Hunter yet again and missed Griffen’s presence on the field. Barr missed several more games and the Vikings traded Hughes away with the expectation that they would get more snaps from their young cornerback group. Instead, they released Gladney after he was was indicted by a grand jury on a felony domestic violence charge, and Dantzler struggled to crack the starting roster. The Vikings signed Bashaud Breeland late in the offseason, expecting him to play opposite Peterson. Breeland was cut before the season was over.

The Vikings’ envisioned defensive line — Griffen, Tomlinson, Pierce and Hunter — played all of 12 snaps together, spread out over three games. Barr didn’t play in any of those games. Never able to field the full corps they intended to start, with additional injuries to the cornerbacks, the Vikings played with one hand tied behind their back on defense.

The one thing that rarely failed Zimmer was actually his calling card — the scheme. The Vikings still fielded one of the top third-down teams in the league, only allowing opponents a 36.4 percent conversion rate. Their defensive failures were largely the result of execution errors, especially in 2021 — players getting beat deep downfield, or safeties misreading assignments rather than a scheme being exploited.

It’s easy to think the NFL has passed Zimmer by, and perhaps it has in areas like offensive philosophy. But his defense has remained ever-evolving. He has been remarkably dynamic in how he’s modified the scheme, finding ways to limit elite quarterbacks and force them away from their preferred playing style. But there’s not much one can do when every defender fits up his gap against the run and then gets bowled over.

The Vikings’ decline was authored by many writers and it wasn’t one single thing that led to the decision to clean house. But what stands out is how the supposed identity of the Vikings was nowhere to be found in Zimmer’s final two seasons.

(Top photo: Raj Mehta / USA Today)