It worked out exactly the way Mike Zimmer and the Cowboys wanted it to.
Despite several days of will-they-or-won’t-they regarding the 67-year-old’s return to Dallas as defensive coordinator, Zimmer told reporters at his introductory press conference that he “always kind of hoped” he would be back with the organization that gave him a Super Bowl ring in the mid-’90s.
“I wanted to be somewhere where I knew people and I trusted people,” Zimmer said Wednesday. “So when this opportunity came up, I was excited.”
As for that lull over the weekend where Rex Ryan noted the lack of a signed contract and even publicly lobbied for the Dallas job live from the ESPN desk, Zimmer says there was no last-minute second-guessing going on behind the scenes.
He was sick over Super Bowl Weekend, he explained, and the agreement had already been reached anyway.
“We kind of slow-played it and kind of went from there,” Zimmer said. “It wasn’t any intense negotiation or anything like that. I knew I wanted to be here; I knew they wanted me to be here. It wasn’t any big deal.”
So Ryan and the conspiracy theorists can settle down.
“I see a lot of Rex Ryan comments,” Zimmer deadpanned.
Now that it’s official, the hire will bring together two coaches who became quite familiar with one another from opposing sidelines in the NFC North. McCarthy recalled hard-fought battles between his Packers and the rival Vikings during Zimmer’s eight years as head coach in Minnesota.
Zimmer did the same.
“When I was in in the NFC North, he was the one I respected most. They were the best team, they were the most well-coached, the teams played the right way. We tried to emulate a lot of those things so we could hopefully compete against them.”
Now he’ll compete alongside McCarthy and complement his offense. And he’ll have as a starting point a defensive unit that’s already among the league’s best.
“We’re not trying to re-invent the wheel here. You know, they’ve been pretty good,” he told reporters. “We want to take the good things that they’ve done and maybe add a few more other things that we’ve done good in the past and try to make this thing manageable where we’re disciplined and we’re well-coached, we play together as a team, and we try to make sure everybody understands their role so that other people on the field can have success doing their job.”
Zimmer did hint that certain dynamics might change under his command, however, particularly given his often fiery handling of players.
“There’s a reputation out there that I’m a jerk or something like that. It is what it is, I guess,” Zimmer explained. “But since it was announced that I was going to be here, I’ve heard from so many players that played for me … texting me and said how happy they are for me. I think if I was such a jerk, I wouldn’t be hearing from those guys.”
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Zimmer readily admitted to a “demanding” coaching style and dropped names of several players who he’s had past run-ins with, including Adam “Pacman” Jones and Anthony Barr, but he was quick to offer that there was always a higher reason for driving some of his players harder.
“The ones that want to be great,” Zimmer pointed out, “they want to be coached. They want to study. They want to understand how they can get better.”
And making the entire Cowboys defense better and ultimately getting them back to the Super Bowl is more than just a contributing factor as to why Zimmer has returned.
“There is no other reason,” he said. “My grandkids are fine and all that, but I can see them anytime. I didn’t come here to do all the work that we need to do if we’re not trying to win the championship.”
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