Minnesota Vikings News: Mike Zimmer cautious about future joint practices
Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer recently spoke about the probability of having joint practices this offseason. He’s going to be more cautious this time around.
As the Minnesota Vikings continue on this offseason, they will be a team to watch this upcoming season. They’re a playoff-contending team as all signs point to them continuing their momentum with hopes of once again being on top of the NFC North. Of course, for the Vikings to once again return to playing high-quality football consistently, it’s what they do in training camp and preseason action that sets the tone for 2020.
In the past, Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer wasn’t shy about having joint practices with another team to use it as a way to gauge how his team would perform against real opposition. It’s been done twice so far in his tenure with holding join practices with the Cincinnati Bengals and Jacksonville Jaguars respectively. There are many benefits in joint practices but also some areas of concern as injuries can happen on top of tempers flaring and fights in the heat of the moment.
In an article written by Courtney Cronin of ESPN, Zimmer recently chimed his thoughts on if he’ll continue having joint practices this offseason, especially with the current pandemic. Here’s what he said:
Mike Zimmer cautious about having joint practices with the Minnesota Vikings
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"“The problem I foresee with having the joint practices is you may not be able to get your guys up to speed fast enough for what they have to do as opposed to worrying about another player. If it gets down to it, I can see there might be depending on how much time we have during training camp and before the games."
In the grand scheme of things, it’s a good decision here since they’ll be a ton of new players on the team compared to last year. This is especially so on the defensive side of the team as having so many new faces will require a bit more coaching, training, and patience above everything else in a private environment.
The last thing the Vikings need is to have too many joint practices as they did in the past to potentially cut into those in-the-moment coaching opportunities that you’ll often find in training camp. Besides that, it’s also important to understand the reality of the situation with what is going on in the world.
With restrictions on travel, social distancing, and everything else in between, it might be best to either not do any joint practices at all and continue with their offseason regimen. Anything can change between now and when players are allowed to be together with their teams but it might be best to cancel any ideas of doing any joint practices for now.
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Overall, Zimmer is right about being cautious in committing to any joint practices based on all the new players coming into the mix in addition to patiently waiting to see how things are with the current pandemic. It might be best to just ditch that idea for now and focus on the task at hand since things are too unpredictable at this point in time.