Mike Florio delivers embarrassing take about the Vikings

A so-called Minnesota Vikings fan, Mike Florio isn’t thrilled about the Mike Zimmer extension.

Before Mike Zimmer was hired to be the team’s head coach in 2014, the Minnesota Vikings were a franchise that had zero direction.

If the Vikings achieved success during the handful of years before Zimmer’s arrival, it wasn’t anything expected and their failures were far too frequent for a team that once used to be a dominant force in the NFL during the early part of their existence.

But since Zimmer was hired, Minnesota has been consistently viewed as a team that can contend for a division title and beyond. With him leading the charge, the Vikings seem to always have a chance at accomplishing something great.

Mike Florio is not a fan of the Minnesota Vikings extending Mike Zimmer

While many people were ecstatic about Minnesota giving an extension to their head coach, there were also some who weren’t too thrilled with the team’s decision.

One of those people is NBC Sports’ Mike Florio, who also happens to be a Vikings fan. Florio is not exactly what one would call an optimist when it comes to Minnesota’s football team and recently he shared his feelings on the current state of the franchise with Zimmer continuing to lead the way.

"“It feels like this team is always going to be good enough to be in the mix, but never good enough to be in the hunt.”"

He used the examples of the Vikings’ recent trips to the playoffs coming to an end at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers (2019 NFC champion) and the Philadelphia Eagles (2017 Super Bowl champion) as some of the reasoning behind his thinking. Florio also wasn’t finished with venting his frustrations about Minnesota.

"“Maybe it’s good enough for the Vikings to strive to win the Super Bowl (and) hope they win a Super Bowl. But instead of blowing it up and starting over again and trying to build a team that within five years that may win a Super Bowl, let’s just keep treading water because it’s going to be good for business to tread water with a team that’s on the fringes of contention.”"

Man, if we didn’t already know he was a fan of the Vikings, it would certainly be hard to tell from these comments.

This isn’t to say that Minnesota doesn’t deserve any criticism and it’s perfectly fine for fans to object to some of the decisions made by their favorite football team. But to think that it’s bad for a team to remain a postseason contender every year is a little hard to understand.

This whole thought that blowing up a team and starting over automatically results in a Super Bowl needs to be thrown in the trash.

This is something that the Vikings attempted to do in 2001 when they fired longtime head coach, Dennis Green.

During Green’s first nine seasons with Minnesota, the team never finished with a losing record, they made the playoffs eight times, and they won four division titles. 2001 was the very first time that the Vikings had a losing record with him as their head coach and it resulted in the franchise showing him the door.

Instead of keeping Green around to continue working towards a championship that he appeared to be getting Minnesota closer to attaining (two conference championship appearances in the three years before 2001), the team decided to get rid of their successful head coach.

This decision worked out so well that the Vikings only qualified for the playoffs four times in the 12 seasons after Green was fired in 2001. Not until Minnesota hired Zimmer in 2014 did things begin to turn back in the right direction for the team.

So, by extending their current head coach, the Vikings are being smart and avoiding a repeat of 2001. As much as some Minnesota fans are unhappy with the team extending Zimmer, the Vikings made the correct decision to keep their successful head coach around past the 2020 season.