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Zim Tzu can bearly tolerate his disgust

The Vikings warrior poet coach dispenses his words of wisdom

Eric Thompson

ED NOTE: This has bad words. Most of the other things we write on here usually don’t, but this one does. It seems to be a popular bit, so until the law catches up with me, I’m going to keep doing it. Thanks for understanding, and thanks for not reading and not letting your kids read it if bad language isn’t your thing. Hope you enjoy the rest of our articles—Ted

When you’re a warrior poet, you have to be on the lookout for self-fulfilling prophecies from your troops. Self fulfilling prophecies tell you that you can’t do X because of Y, based on past history. You can’t invade Russia in the late summer because of the Russian winter, or that you can’t masturbate without arms, for example. And as much as you tell your troops there is zero correlation between X and Y, because you have a cousin without any arms and he says he did just fine in that department thank you very goddamn much, once your troops believe weird shit happens in Chicago and that you’ll lose, when weird shit does happen in Chicago and you do lose, your troops are almost relieved. But you can’t let them walk around thinking they’re a bunch of no arms whacking reverse Nostradamus fap gods though, because then everything you’ve worked for is lost, and you’re on the street looking for work in someplace other than Cleveland. Yeah, fuck The Land, which is quite possibly the dumbest nickname for any city I’ve ever heard. Except for Green Bay, which is known as the toilet paper capital of the world, and that’s the most accurate nickname for any city ever.

Because you are Zim Tzu, The King In The North, Emperor of the Motor City Feline Tribe, Grounder of Airplanes, Defrocker of Cardinals, Subduer of Equestrian Excrement Consumers, Nightmare of Clan Fromage, Breaker Of Gold Fever, High Septon Of Eagan, Lord Commander Of The Iron Range And Twin Cities, Master Of Fortress TCO, Honorary Elder Of Mankato and Protector Of The Realm.

And when the Great Unwashed want to know how to keep their fears from becoming a real life Ouroboros, you must speak, to calm them and make them throw up their own ass, so you can get things back on track. And that is where we come in, your friends at The Daily Norseman.* We take what is said in the day after a game press conference, regurgitate what is really inferred,** and then everyone can walk away happy with an understanding of what’s to come.***

*I have no friends.

**We do nothing of the kind. The law firm of Franklin, Bash, and Bateman gently reminds you that this is a work of satire, and any and all interpretations are just mindless bullshit that have no inference on actual words of Mike Zimmer, spoken or otherwise, and they can sue you and take Ted for all his money in exorbitant lawyer fees if you try to sue him.

***If you understand any of this, seek professional medical help.

As usual, Zim Tzu had an opening statement:

What Zim Tzu said: After watching the tape, a lot of the same things that I said last night. What time was it, midnight? Something like that? Made too many mistakes in critical areas, fumbled the ball on the 14 yard line on first-and-10 going in. We throw an interception right before the half, so we lose points there. I did a presentation to the team last week about when a defense has penalties how the scoring goes up. We gave up six points because we had penalties on defense, and we got beat by five. There’s a lot of things that we’re going to clean up and get back to work.

What Zim Tzu meant: Well, my fucking opinion hasn’t changed in twelve hours, of which two were a restless, fitful sleep thanks to the kaleidoscope of utter bullshit I looked at with my one good eye. I guess since we’re close to the fucking holiday season, Flip decided to adopt the Salvation Army offense, because weren’t we just so fucking giving with our fumbles, interceptions, and that goddamn unholy pick six. Fucking penalties.

Q: What do you attribute some of those uncharacteristic penalties to, especially the unnecessary roughness?

What Zim Tzu said: I don’t know. I didn’t talk to each one of those guys individually. I think the one on Eric Wilson was off base, really. Really the one [Eric] Kendricks had, he touched the guy, he was still inbounds and then hit the white stripe and the guy kind of took a dive. Harrison [Smith] has got to pull off of the quarterback.

What Zim Tzu meant: Mostly bullshit. The only time there should be a towel penalty is when naked dude is strutting around the gym locker room in his goddamn birthday suit after a shower. In that case you should get a 15 day, can’t go to the gym penalty for violating all the basic unspoken fucking rules that apply in a locker room, the first one being is that you walk around with a towel covering your workout buddy. Jesus, no one wants to see that shit, man. And you JUST KNOW that’s an ELCA Lutheran walking around like that, too. No Missouri Synod Lutheran would ever do that, as no Missouri Synod Lutheran has ever been naked with the lights on in front of people before, not even their wife. Damn ELCA Lutherans.

Q: Now that you’ve gotten three and a half games of tape on Eric Wilson, how do you think he’s done in relief of Anthony Barr?

What Zim Tzu said: For the most part he’s done well. I don’t think last night was his best game, but the other games he’s played pretty well.

What Zim Tzu meant: Pretty good. He has about the same ‘he’s good/he sucks’ ratio as Barr, and he’s way fucking cheaper. Just sayin’.

Q: When you’re evaluating players that have a history of turnovers, how do you consider that and figure out if that’s something you can coach out of them?

What Zim Tzu said: It’s all part of the process. If a guy is a fumbler, that’s part of it. But you know, guys can change. Tiki Barber had a huge fumbling problem that he ended up fixing. It’s just a process for some guys.

What Zim Tzu meant: Well, when you’re looking to drop 84 large—guaranteed—on a guy, you talk yourself into believing you can fix their turnover issue. When it isn’t working, you reference a player from over a decade ago, and you cling to that outdated example like a waterlogged life jacket out in the ocean during the middle of a hurricane, and you pray God that fucking Coast Guard Cutter spots you in 30 foot seas and zero visibility.

Q: Do you look at the struggles in the run game against Chicago as a tough matchup on the road against a good run defense coupled with playing from behind and needed to pass, or as something larger?

What Zim Tzu said: I think we need to be more efficient in running the football. I do think that there’s times that we need to stick with it a little bit more, but I understand. It gets frustrating, you’re trying to run the ball and you get a minus one, then you tend to go to something where you can get some yards. That leads to third downs usually, and you try it again and you get two yards. It’s like they used to say, could be one, one, one, then 15 [yards]. But you got to keep at it. I thought early in the ball game we ran the ball pretty well. I know that Latavius [Murray] had a nice run, and Dalvin [Cook] had about an eight yard run early. But the two outside linebackers that they have make it a tough test for some of those, so you got to have some runs in there that you feel good about.

What Zim Tzu meant: I look at it and I see monkeys fucking footballs, from the moment the ball is snapped and the linemen all miss their blocks, until the runner is dropped for a four yard loss. At least every time I watch a monkey on a National Geographic show they make me chuckle, even when they’re chucking their own poop at each other. In an unrelated note, monkeys have a better shot at hitting something with their poop than we do of getting a four yard gain right now.

Q: What did you like about Anthony Harris’ performance?

What Zim Tzu said: He made a couple of nice plays. Obviously the interception was a really nice play. The second one, he threw it to him, but he made a nice play on the sideline in breaking up a route. There’s things that he has to clean up as well.

What Zim Tzu meant: He’s the only guy that looks like he isn’t a meth addict at the moment.

Q: On Kirk Cousins’ two interceptions was he being over aggressive?

What Zim Tzu said: The first one was a miscommunication. The second one it was a misread. He thought he was getting something else and he didn’t get that.

What Zim Tzu meant: He was being stupid.

Q: Last night you said you didn’t know if the team wasn’t listening or didn’t care. When you look at the tape what did you see today?

What Zim Tzu said: I think we had some lack of awareness on a few plays and I pointed them out today. I’ve asked several players if they’re listening to me or not or if they quit listening to me and there’s been and not just them, I didn’t ask them “did you” but “did these guys stop listening to me” and they said no.

What Zim Tzu meant: Apparently everything I said went in one goddamn ear and right out the other, and gained speed in between. It was like my words hit an ‘I Don’t Give A Fuck’ wind tunnel as soon as they passed into the ear canal.

Q: With an experienced team is it a surprise when some of your keys to victory do not happen?

What Zim Tzu said: Not really. I could say let’s rush for 1,500 yards today and I set the goals pretty high on most of the things. The turnovers, we talked about that all week, we had to win the turnover battle and we didn’t do that. We had to take care of the football and I’m not going to get into the rest of the things we talked about because we have to play them again.

What Zim Tzu meant: LOL this is the fucking Vikings, man. It’s been happening for over 50 years, and it will happen for the next 50 but you’ll be back in week 17 to watch this, because this team is like a gruesome car wreck you pass on the highway. No matter how hard you try, you can’t look away.

Q: How hard has that been considering your teams have been pretty good at taking care of the ball the last four years?

What Zim Tzu said: It’s been frustrating at times. Like the Saints game we’re getting down there, we’re getting ready to score and Adam [Thielen] fumbles the ball and he’s pretty good with it. I guess stuff happens sometimes.

What Zim Tzu meant: I want to throw things and break shit. All of the shit.

Q: Kirk Cousins was talking about a sign that is in the quarterback’s room about your record with turnovers. Can you elaborate? Are those signs all over as a reminder?

What Zim Tzu said: There’s a lot of signs in different places. I don’t know which one he’s referring to actually, but I wouldn’t know the statistic on that one.

What Zim Tzu meant: Signs, signs, everywhere are signs. Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind. Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the signs? Yeah, here’s the fucking sign. You tell me, did he read it or not?

Q: Do you think this offense is still learning how to play together?

What Zim Tzu said: I don’t know if learning to play together is quite the thing. We do have a lot of guys going in different spots. It might be, what is the best way to say this, it might be a little volume. A little too much volume.

What Zim Tzu meant: For the love of Denny Green I hope not, it’s week 11. If they are we’re between Tarvaris Jackson and Brooks Bollinger levels of fucked. Maybe we’ll just install the three play Tecmo playbook and see if they can handle that.

Q: What do you mean by that?

What Zim Tzu said: Too much. Let’s just play football. You run a really good out route, you run the out route. He runs a good curl, you run the curl. You know what I mean? So, maybe we just need to focus a little bit on not trying to trick the other team quite so much.

What Zim Tzu meant: We’re going to try and take out the chapters in the playbook titled ‘Turnovers’ and ‘Backbreaking Pick Six Plays’, and we’ll see if that changes our fortunes around.

Q: How much do you think with all the pressure Kirk Cousins has been under has contributed to some of the interceptions?

What Zim Tzu said: I saw that watching the tape, there was a lot of clean pockets in there. A lot of clean pockets. Sometimes we hit things and sometimes we don’t. I’d have to think back on the two interceptions if they were pressured or not. I’m not sure I know what pressure is according to whoever is deciding it.

What Zim Tzu meant: Fuckin’ PFF. Whatever, take that shit with a grain of salt. He had time to throw. See you next week.