Minnesota Vikings: Coaches criticized for handling of final play

The Minnesota Vikings fumbled away the chance to tie or take the lead with time running out against Arizona and coaches are taking heat for their decision-making on the final play.

Second-guessers are lining up to take shots at Mike Zimmer for the way the Vikings handled their final play Thursday night in Arizona.

Needing a field goal to tie with just 13 seconds left, the Vikings faced a third-and-ten on the Arizona 31. The Vikes were already in field goal range but elected to run a pass play despite having no time outs.

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Teddy Bridgewater dropped back but unfortunately left tackle Matt Kalil was blown up by Dwight Freeney and the defensive end stripped the ball from Teddy Bridgewater’s hand for a game-ending sack-and-fumble.

Criticism of Mike Zimmer’s decision-making immediately began streaming in on social media. Why call a dangerous pass play in that situation instead of spiking the ball and setting up the field goal?

What had been a pretty enjoyable night up until that point turned into another opportunity for Viking fans to vent their frustration. Unusually, Zimmer was the one taking most of the heat.

The sentiment nation-wide seemed to be that Zimmer screwed up by trying to get off another pass play and exposing his quarterback to the sack that ended the game.

Bridgewater received some criticism for double-clutching while loading up for an apparent down-field throw. And Kalil was naturally ripped for letting Freeney get by him so easily.

After the game, both quarterback and coach talked about what they were thinking before and during the play.

Zimmer told the media that he did consider going for the field goal on third down (via NFL.com):

"“Yeah, I thought about it,” Zimmer said afterward. “I thought about a lot of things. I thought about throwing the ball in the end zone … but you know, we were trying to get the ball out of bounds, get a little closer to kick the field goal.”"

Teddy Bridgewater gave his own explanation of the play in the locker room (via St. Paul Pioneer-Press):

"“The play call was designed to get out of bounds,” Bridgewater explained. “We had all our receivers coming from the left side of the field so I tried to do my best to wait for those guys to at least get on the right side of the hash so they don’t get tackled in bounds since we didn’t have any timeouts.”"

Norv Turner was the one responsible for dialing up a slow-developing pass play in that situation, so perhaps more of the heat should be directed at him.

Bottom line though, Mike Zimmer is the one responsible for managing the game and he made a very questionable decision electing to run another play there instead of going for the field goal.

The perception this morning is that the short-handed Vikings fought hard to stay in the game against a top-drawer opponent and were let down by their coaches in the final seconds.

Any way you look at it, that was a very disappointing end to an unexpectedly competitive and entertaining game.

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