Mike Zimmer ‘Openly Complained’ About Having To Coach Kirk Cousins

It’s not the biggest surprise to hear more reports surfacing about the animosity between vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins and former head coach, Mike Zimmer.

Throughout the entirety of the Zimmer tenure in Minnesota, there were often reports that the QB-coach dynamic was far from ideal. And even though it was never admitted by either party, the general consensus among insiders was that the two just didn’t like each other very much.

On Monday, another report detailed the distaste Mike Zimmer had for Kirk Cousins. According to a report from The Athletic, Mike  Zimmer “openly complained” about Kirk Cousins throughout the 2021 season, and many on the staff agreed with the head coach.

Here what the report said about how Mike Zimmer viewed Kirk Cousins by the end of their time together:

“Zimmer complained openly in coaching meetings about Cousins, and some of Zimmer’s top lieutenants echoed the sentiment. Zimmer didn’t feel the quarterback made enough “winning plays,” that he didn’t take the necessary shots to help lead the Vikings to victory, and that he didn’t elevate his teammates.”

The report would go on to say that many people in the Vikings organization — specifically the front office — sided with Kirk Cousins over Mike Zimmer. And in the end, the team hired Rams OC Kevin O’ Connell to better work with Cousins’ talents.

“I know who (Cousins) is as a player, and I know what he’s capable of, and part of our job as coaches is maximizing a player’s ability to go out every single Sunday and have success,” O’Connell said. “I feel that’s going to be an advantage for us as we build our system offensively, make sure we really focus on the things Kirk does well, which I do think are a lot of aspects of playing the position, and help him on a daily basis connect with his team, lead us, be a completely quiet-minded quarterback that can go play because he’s talented enough to go do that.”

The Vikings will certainly hope that O’Connell can get along with Kirk Cousins much better than Mike Zimmer did.

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