Bridgewater and Zimmer leave field victorious, provide hope for Vikings
MINNEAPOLIS -- For the first time in his young career, Teddy Bridgewater took the final snap at the end of a game in the victory formation for the Minnesota Vikings. The rookie quarterback with so much faith placed on his shoulders took the game ball and sought out his first-year head coach.
Bridgewater handed coach Mike Zimmer the ball with a message of its significance.
"He says, 'First division win.' I said, 'Oh, thanks," Zimmer said after Minnesota's season-ending 13-9 victory against the Chicago Bears.
Zimmer had downplayed getting a win in the NFC North. He wanted to win the season's final game but said it wouldn't have any carryover effect to next season. Then as coach and rookie quarterback walked off the field victorious, the meaning was clearer.
"The fans have been great with me here. I think it gives them some hope," Zimmer said. "I think the way Bridgewater played gives them some hope. Hopefully they've liked how we compete. We're definitely not perfect. We've got a long way to go, but there's some good positives to take out of things."
Sunday's win was Zimmer's first in the NFC North and kept Chicago in the division cellar. Bridgewater wanted to make sure his coach appreciated the moment.
"I was more excited for coach Zimmer," Bridgewater said of giving the ball to Zimmer instead of keeping it himself. "I wanted to tell him, 'The first of many,' but I was so excited and so caught up in how well the guys played today. Today, we showed a lot of character. The character of this team, talking about Audie Cole, Adam Thielen, guys we asked to make plays for us today, and they stepped up and did a great job.
"So it was an overall team effort, and I just felt so comfortable, and I just felt good giving coach Zimmer that ball."
More importantly, Minnesota heads into an offseason with positive feelings and, by all appearances, the two most important pieces -- coach and quarterback -- settled.
The Vikings finished the season 7-9 and far enough out of the playoff picture that a win Sunday was solely window-dressing. While the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions were preparing to play Sunday afternoon to decide the division title, Minnesota was fending off the Bears with a defensive stop on fourth down with 1 minute, 43 seconds left.
A defensive stop in Zimmer's first season as the team's coach is meaningful heading into another offseason sure to include plenty of change.
A defense that had been victimized by the Miami Dolphins a week ago to nearly 500 yards of offense limited Chicago to 264 yards and kept the Bears out of the end zone. After a failed first-down attempt kept the Vikings from clinching the game on offense, Chicago had the ball with 2:53 left and 97 yards to go with a chance to win.
Minnesota's defense, Zimmer's unit, allowed a 22-yard scramble to Bears quarterback Jay Cutler and a 14-yard pass before clamping down and finishing off Chicago and perhaps ending Marc Trestman's tenure as Bears coach.
"I was happy with the way that the defense responded after last week's performance," Zimmer said. "I thought again that Teddy played well. He had a 90 quarterback rating and would have been over 100 if the ball wouldn't have hit our guy in the chest and bounced out. I was really proud of the effort though, the way they fought."
So proud that Zimmer wished the season was still going.
"I told them I'd see them Wednesday," Zimmer said. "I don't want to stop. I want to keep going. So I was going to give them a victory Monday, but they said it would be Monday, April 20 or something like that. So, they overruled me on that one. But there was a lot of good things."
None more so than the development of Bridgewater, the first-round pick who wasn't even supposed to start this season. The rookie signal-caller was supposed to have considerable time in an apprenticeship under veteran Matt Cassel.
Instead, Bridgewater stood out along with Oakland's Derek Carr among the group of celebrated rookie quarterbacks. Starting his 12th game of the season, Bridgewater completed 17 of his 25 passes for 209 yards and a touchdown Sunday. He was charged with an interception that went off the hands of receiver Cordarrelle Patterson and had a 90.2 quarterback rating.
After the Bears took a 6-3 lead, Bridgewater led the Vikings 80 yards in six plays and connected on a 44-yard touchdown pass to Adam Thielen.
"It's unbelievable the way that he matured and just kept getting better each week, every day in practice," Thielen said. "It's crazy how you could see it every day in practice, and now you can see it in the games."
Bridgewater said he thought it would be "crazy" if someone would have told him at the beginning of the season he would start 12 games.
"I thought that this was going to be a year where I was going to be able to come in and compete but things happened," Bridgewater said. "I've only started 12 games, and my next 12 games will be much better than my previous 12. So just being able to gain confidence throughout the course of the year, I think that's what this year was about."
Bridgewater finished with the third-best completion percentage (64.4 percent) by a rookie in NFL history with at least 215 pass attempts. On 402 pass attempts, Bridgewater had 14 touchdowns to 12 interceptions with 2,919 passing yards, averaging 7.3 yards per attempt, and an 85.2 quarterback rating.
"This kid is really everything that you want in a quarterback, I think," Zimmer said. "All I know is the players on the football team, the coaches, the organization, hopefully the fans, believe in this kid. . . . The thing that I get impressed with, with him, is he makes other people better around him.
"The thing he's done to come in here as a rookie, to take charge, to really put this team on his shoulders as much as we did, he's really impressive."
And the coach and quarterback, more so than a Week 17 victory, offer hope for the Vikings.
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