Mike Zimmer Looks to Toughen Up Practices for the Minnesota Vikings
According to Ben Goessling of ESPN, Minnesota Vikings Head Coach Mike Zimmer intends on toughening up practice for his players in 2017.
In the report, Zimmer had this to say about future practices and they way they may go:
"Going into last season, part of my whole goal was, I thought we had a pretty good football team and I wanted to make sure we got to the first game healthy,"
"And so maybe I was a little bit cautious in some of the things. We're going to get back to being the Vikings. We're going to be blue-collar, and we're going to do the things that got us to be, where we played teams, that they respected the way we played."
"Quite honestly, I don't care how long practices goes. If the schedule says two hours, and I'm not happy about it, we're going to go 2:30. I don't care. We're going to do it until I feel good about it."
The NFL has clearly put rules in place to sort of loosen up the toughness showed and exuded during practice from limiting contact to even limiting practice time.
Zimmer apparently plans to work within those rules yet add a layer of toughness to this team and organization during practices moving forward.
The Vikings have organized team activities scheduled for later this week then mini camp in June and training camp beginning in late July.