A day after their heart-wrenching 23-20 loss in Arizona, Vikings coach Mike Zimmer told reporters that he was happy with how his team played, but acknowledged the team didn’t do enough to win.
“I really want to credit the players for the way that they attacked the situation and especially coming after the loss that we had the week before,” said Zimmer. “I said I’m not into moral victories; we didn’t do enough things to win the football game. We played with the heart and the desire and the fight and all of those things that I want, but we turned the ball over three times.”
All three of those turnovers occurred in Cardinals territory as the Vikings appeared to be driving for scores. Had they avoided just one of them, the outcome Thursday may have been different.
When asked if they should have done something different at the end of the game, Zimmer said they were trying to do what was best for the team.
“If I knew that was going to happen I probably would have done something different,” Zimmer said. “I thought about kicking the field goal with 13 seconds left on the clock, if we missed the field goal, I’m wrong, we should have got closer.”
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They didn’t give any thought to running the ball on second down then clocking it to set up the game-tying field goal.
“[The third down play] is a play that we practice every week for a situation like that. They had more people rushing in that particular play than normally when that happens so that was a little bit different, and then we got beat,” Zimmer said. “In retrospect, probably could have called something else or we could have kicked the field goal or whatever.”
The Vikings have some time to rest up and recover before returning to practice Tuesday. Minnesota (8-5) plays at home against Chicago (5-7) a week from Sunday.
