Name: Mike Zimmer says final drive was ‘a complete disaster’ for Vikings
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Mike Zimmer says final drive was ‘a complete disaster’ for Vikings

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By | | Pioneer PressWith a chance to win the game Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium, and in the process exorcise demons that have been haunting them all season, the Vikings instead responded with a comedy of errors.Trailing by a point, quarterback Kirk Cousins took over at his own 25-yard line with 1 minute, 44 seconds left on the clock. All the Vikings needed was a field goal to notch their first win of the season. They even got some help as the Tennessee Titans were called for a 15-yard roughing-the-passer penalty on the first play.Things then completely unraveled and the Vikings continued their spiral toward irrelevance with a 31-30 loss to the Titans.Following an incomplete pass to running back Dalvin Cook on first down, Cousins and center Garrett Bradbury failed to synch on a shotgun snap that Cousins hurriedly pounced on for a loss of 14 yards. It didn’t get much better from there, as Cousins had pressure in his face as soon as he took the snap on third down and finally, facing fourth-and-26, lofted a Hail Mary that got intercepted to seal the loss.“You’ve got a chance to go down and win the game with a field goal and it’s a complete disaster,” head coach Mike Zimmer lamented. “We made too many mistakes to win the game.”While there’s no doubt Cousins deserves blame for failing to get it done once again, there wasn’t much he could do on the final drive with the way his offensive line played. Not only did Bradbury inexplicably deliver his worst snap of the day, everybody else lost their respective battles in the trenches.Asked about the pressure in his face, Cousins opted not to throw his line under the bus. Although the quarterback rarely takes blame himself, he deflected it in this scenario when he had every right to do so.“I wasn’t really looking at the rush,” Cousins said. “I’ll have to watch the film and I could better answer that question. They got home a couple times. It wasn’t our best drive.”It spoiled an otherwise solid performance by the offense as Cook rushed for a career-high 181 rushing yards and rookie Justin Jefferson broke out with 175 receiving yards and a long touchdown reception.“We played a great game throughout the game; those last couple of drives really killed us,” Jefferson said. “We just made bad decisions and had some mistakes. That’s just something we have to correct and go in next week and have a better outcome.”We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.Sign up for Newsletters and AlertsFollow UsMost PopularClose

By | | Pioneer PressWith a chance to win the game Sunday afternoon at U.S. Bank Stadium, and in the process exorcise demons that have been haunting them all season, the Vikings instead responded with a comedy of errors.Trailing by a point, quarterback Kirk Cousins took over at his own 25-yard line with 1 minute, 44 seconds left on the clock. All the Vikings needed was a field goal to notch their first win of the season. They even got some help as the Tennessee Titans were called for a 15-yard roughing-the-passer penalty on the first play.Things then completely unraveled and the Vikings...

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Dane Mizutani

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Mike Zimmer says final drive was ‘a complete disaster’ for Vikings

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