Your Weekly Moment Of Zim Tzu: And The Horse You Rode In On

HEY THERE YOU--YES YOU--NSFW MATERIAL FOLLOWS--Ted

Mike Zimmer, the Vikings head coach and Chief Philosopher In Charge, doesn't genuflect or toss out false praise after a close, hard fought game that the Vikings lost. No sir, because pats on the back are for the weak and needy, and Mike Zimmer is anything but that. But he does pass out knowledge bombs like a B-52 carpet bombs, if you know what you're looking for,* and that's where Zim Tzu comes in.  What is Zim Tzu, you ask? Zim Tzu is Mike Zimmer's calling card,** aside from his football acumen.

*I have no idea what I'm looking for

**I have no idea what the metaphor 'calling card' means, it just sounded good when I wrote it

It's a philosophy*, a way of life**, and one must understand the nuances of the spoken word to get behind what he's really trying to say.***

*Really, this is just a press conference with me inventing stupid things he never said

**Seriously, if this gives you some true meaning of life or answers some mystical question you've pondered for years, you are very susceptible to being brainwashed by a cult. Please seek professional help. Immediately. Like put this down and go see a therapist now kind of immediately

***No idea what he's really trying to say. This is more farcical than Donald Trump's hair.

As always, we take excerpts from Mike Zimmer's weekly press conference and interpret his words into their final, crystallized true meaning.* What the coach actually said will be in quotes, and the Zim Tzu translation immediately follows.

*Seriously, if this were a book, you would find it in the 'fiction' section, because it's all made up. Or in the 'toilet humor' category, between 'dirty Irish limericks' and 'fart jokes.' Wait, this starts with a Z. So it would be last. Where it belongs.

What Zim Tzu said: After watching the tape, I kind of really feel a lot like I did yesterday after the ballgame. Disappointed that we didn't start better. I think we have some resiliency and some tough guys and some fight. Probably didn't play good enough to win; too many mistakes against a team like that. We're never going to have moral victories around here. Questions?

What Zim Tzu meant: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKKK...we could've won that game. Moral victories suck. Winning at Denver would've been pretty cool, not gonna lie.

Q: Did they blitz more than you anticipated after recording seven sacks?

What Zim Tzu said: They blitzed a little bit more, yeah. We had a couple mental errors, we had a couple guys get beat, so it was a combination of things. I thought Teddy did a good job of getting the ball out, but there was a couple of time where we weren't able to adjust the protection because of some of the movement things that we had going on.

What Zim Tzu meant: No more than the Germans blitzed Poland or France back in the day...YES THEY BLITZED MORE BECAUSE IT WORKED. If we would have pulled our heads out of our asses maybe we could've stopped it, but sometimes it felt they had 22 or 23 guys at the line of scrimmage. I'm just glad that Teddy wasn't murdered. He was almost murdered.

Q: Looking back, are there things you wished you had done to help Teddy Bridgewater with the protection? It looked like T.J. Clemmings versus Von Miller was a tough matchup.

What Zim Tzu said: We did help him quite a bit, it wasn't like the whole game. There are some times some guys are going to have to line up and play and there were some times T.J. blocked him, but the times he didn't block him, that's what shows up. So was there things that we could have done different? Absolutely, probably numbers of things in every area we could have done differently.

What Zim Tzu meant: We should've put eleventy tight ends on the right side to help Clemmings. He was in over his head like Peter Dinklage in the shallow end of the kiddie pool. But we did give him help, it just stands out when we didn't because those are most of the plays where Von Miller or somebody came free and Teddy got almost murdered. I hate it when my quarterback gets almost fuckin' murdered. Fuckers.

Q: Has T.J. Clemmings progressed over his first four starts?

What Zim Tzu said: It's more about consistency right now. There's times where he does really, really good and there's times when - he got beat inside one time, he had a mental error one time that caused a sack, he went to the wrong guy. It's things like that. But there's a lot of good things that he does and when he's good, he's good. He's a young guy that we're going to have to keep grinding with his making sure that everything is precise with him and continue to work with him some technically, but he continues to impress in some things. We've just got to keep going with him.

What Zim Tzu meant: T.J. is like a toddler right now. He'll grab a cup of milk, start to tip it, and you lose your shit and go all like DO NOT SPILL THAT MILK ON THE FLOOR OR I'LL WHIP YOUR ASS YOUNG MAN, and then he looks right at you and spills it. You want to spank him or put him in timeout and then he'll do something super cute and you go all AWWWWWWWWWWWW and you let it slide. Only Clemmings is a guy that can kick your ass if you try and put him in timeout much less whip his ass, so you live with the spilled fuckin' milk. And instead of 'awww', you go 'NOOOOOOO' as your quarterback gets almost fuckin' murdered from time to time. I'm just going to give that big sumbitch a 40 ounce sippy cup and call it good. I fuckin' love sippy cups.

Q: How did Matt Kalil do?

What Zim Tzu said: Matt did good. He got beat on one game over there, but I thought overall he held his own against [DeMarcus] Ware. And there was times we helped him, too, but he had a fair amount of one-on-one's. He went to the wrong guy one time causing an issue.

What Zim Tzu meant: Matt...did not suck. We'll take it. Well, except for that one time where he had his head up his ass. But that happened to everyone on the line. He just had his head up his ass less than the rest of the line.

Q: Do you feel like Teddy Bridgewater fared well under pressure?

What Zim Tzu said: Yeah, well that's always one of his strengths is his poise and getting the ball in the right place. The impressive part to me was what he did in the second half; he got hit and roughed up a little bit in that first half. And in the second half he kept his poise and made some great throws. He can play better, he can play a lot better, but I think he did some outstanding things in the second half.

What Zim Tzu meant: He kinda sucked in the first half, but that's to be expected when you get almost murdered. A couple times it looked like his spleen got ruptured or his back severed. We had Eric Sugarman look up his symptoms on WebMD at halftime and it came back with toe cancer, because a Web MD self diagnosis is always cancer of some kind. So thinking he was terminal, he flung that fuckin' ball in the second half, man. Teddy's a gamer, love his poise, especially when he gets almost murdered. I love that fuckin' kid. Also, Teddy does not have toe cancer, and is not terminal. But he did get almost murdered. Fuckers.

Q: Do you like where you team is headed now at the first quarter point of the season?

What Zim Tzu said: Well, I like this football team. I think they work real hard. We have to get better, there's no question. I think the teams that we've played, three out of the four were playoff teams last year. The last team we played was 23-2 or something at home over the last four years, but I'm not happy with where we are at, no. I think we have a chance to be a good football team and if we ever do put it all together, we can be a really good football team, but that's a lot of if's and injuries and there's all kinds of things, but there's a lot of football left to be played. I think we have a chance to be a good team.

What Zim Tzu meant: We comin' for you, and we comin' hard. And when we get there...and we're going to go all Berserker on your ass. But we aren't there yet. We're close, though. Unless Teddy gets actually murdered. That would be bad.

Q: How do you help Adrian Peterson become a better blocker so that he can stay on the field more often?

What Zim Tzu said: Honestly, Adrian only had one protection problem this last week, but other than that he did a good job in all of his protections. He's working very hard at it. We kept him in there on some third downs this time, so we'll keep going with it. The thing about Adrian is that he doesn't just say, "Hey, I'm a running back, I don't want to work on it." He wants to work on this. He wants to be out there as much as he possibly can, so he's committed to becoming a better pass protector and I believe he is. He's working very hard at it and knowing which guys to block and how to block them and there's a couple times he had Von Miller the other day, a couple times he had [DeMarcus] Ware.

What Zim Tzu meant: It is what it is. He takes his on the field protection with the quarterback about as seriously as he takes his off the field protection with the ladies. He can run like a sumbitch, though, can't he?

Q: How do you evaluate Kyle Rudolph's play through the first four games?

What Zim Tzu said: Kyle is doing good. He's a great kid and he keeps working extremely hard. I actually had a talk with him today, each game is going to call for something different, for him to do something different for us. He's got to want to accept the role that he is in that week and stay patient with a lot of things and a lot of plays will come his way. I love his personality, his determination and he'll continue to be a big part.

What Zim Tzu meant: Kyle's kinda sucked. If you have him on your fantasy team, he's been kind of a tire fire. Too bad my fantasy league isn't a PPT league, which is points per tattoo, because then he'd be a boss with that sleeve tattoo thing he has. But it isn't, and it doesn't count. So yeah, he's kinda sucked. He's a good guy though. He'll be better. Fucker.

Q: Where is Stefon Diggs at in terms of his knowledge of the offense?

What Zim Tzu said: I think he has a good overall understanding of everything. A lot of it is lining up in the right place, being at the right depth, making sure you run the routes the correct way. I believe he was short on one route the other day, but for the most part, for a young guy, I think he did alright.

What Zim Tzu meant: WOOOOOOO HE AT THE TOP OF THE DEPTH CHART WOOOOOOOOOOO BECAUSE HE'S A PLAYMAKER BABY!!! He needs to hold on to the fuckin' ball though.

Q: You mentioned yesterday you weren't pleased with your defensive play call on Ronnie Hillman's big run, looking at film did you see chances to stop him?

What Zim Tzu said: Oh yeah, we didn't execute it. I'll bet you I call myself a few names probably 20 times a game, you could have called a better call here, or I thought they were going to do this. I don't necessarily think it was the best call at that particular time, but we did not execute. We had about one, two, three, four, five guys that did not execute.

What Zim Tzu meant: I was a fuckin' idiot. Damn it. That whole play was one big Kabuki Dick Dance.

Q: Was Robert Blanton one of those five?

What Zim Tzu said: It was five guys, there's only 11 out there, so...

What Zim Tzu meant: ...crickets...