Is Mike Zimmer to blame for the Vikings’ kicking game circus?

Trading for Kaare Vedvik is the latest attempt by the Minnesota Vikings to fix an area of their special teams unit that has been a consistent problem under head coach Mike Zimmer.

In his just his second season as the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, Mike Zimmer was a simple field goal conversion away from delivering the franchise their first playoff win in over five years.

All that needed to happen was for Vikings kicker Blair Walsh to make a 27-yard field goal attempt with 26 seconds left in their first-round matchup against the Seattle Seahawks in the 2015 playoffs. Well, we all know what the outcome of this kick was and Minnesota’s kicking situation really hasn’t ever been the same since.

Is it possible that Walsh’s infamous miss was the culmination of the kicker dealing with months upon months of criticism from Zimmer?

Walsh was eventually let go by the Vikings in 2016 and the team has used three different kickers since. Kaare Vedvik, who Minnesota recently acquired from the Baltimore Ravens, could potentially be the team’s fourth kicker since 2017.

The Los Angeles Chargers and Oakland Raiders are the only NFL teams to use more kickers than the Vikings during the last two seasons. Before Zimmer became the team’s head coach, Minnesota had just two kickers from 2006 to 2013.

So is the Vikings’ current head coach to blame for the kicking circus that the team has experienced over the last few years? Let’s dive a little deeper and see if this is actually a possibility.