In our first couple of episodes for our new Bengals podcast, The Orange and Black Insider, you’ve received key insight into the Bengals from our Cincy Jungle staff. As the Bengals are set to kick off their first official game of the 2016 preseason, we decided to have our very first guest on the show to give us some insight from the opposing team.
Ted Glover, editor of the SB Nation Minnesota Vikings blog The Daily Norseman, joined us to give us an inside look into the team as they set to face the Bengals this Friday. Aside from giving us updates on the status of the Vikings and their outlook for 2016, Glover touched on the close relationships between the two clubs. We asked him about Mike Zimmer’s impact on Minnesota since his hiring as head coach back in 2014.
“You know, I love Mike Zimmer,” Glover said. “He actually just got a contract extension, I believe it was a three-year deal—the Vikings haven’t released the terms of the deal. I hope he’s the Minnesota Vikings coach for a long time. He’s brought in an accountability that I don’t know the team had under Leslie Frazier. He (Frazier) was a good guy, well-respected and liked amongst his peers in the NFL, but toward the end of the Frazier regime, there was just this lack of enthusiasm, I guess, if you will. A lack of accountability, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but there were excuses every week.
“Mike Zimmer is the antithesis of that,” Glover continued. “He is a fiery guy, an emotional guy, who wears his emotions on his sleeve about as much as an NFL coach does. It’s refreshing—he’ll call some players out and say ‘hey, this guy is doing things really well, but he needs to work on this’. Or a former player they cut, who was injured early on and he said the famous, ‘you can’t make the club in the tub’. So, he’s brought an increased accountability—especially on defense.”
Check out the clip below of our interview with Glover. A big thanks to him and The Daily Norseman in helping to coordinate the interview.