
Welcome to the Wednesday edition of The Cooler, where there's only one team on my mind. Let's get to it:
*In firing offensive coordinator John DeFilippo on Tuesday, Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer made a seemingly obvious decision.
DeFilippo's offense had sputtered so badly on Monday against Seattle, coming very close to being shut out, that his Wikipedia page was altered by frustrated fans to read that he was the "worst offensive coordinator in the history of the NFL" (which has since been deleted, but not because fan sentiment changed). Former Vikings QB Sage Rosenfels tweeted during the game (and later deleted) "The Vikings need a new OC. Now." He got his wish.
Vikings wide receiver Adam Thielen was caught on an ESPN in-game microphone Monday uttering an expletive on the Vikings' final meaningless TD drive that expressed his frustration with the offense.
Zimmer had spent the last several weeks barely able to hide his frustration with DeFilippo. Kirk Cousins was regressing. Nothing was going well, and happiness was as hard to come by as a relevant touchdown drive against a quality opponent. A change was inevitable and understandable.
All that said: There was a time this season when almost everyone seemed pretty happy with the Vikings' offense. Maybe it was a little uneven. Maybe Cousins was taking more hits than necessary. Turnovers were a problem. But the points … they were coming.
As Ben Goessling noted in his main piece on the firing, the Vikings were No. 8 in the NFL in yards gained and No. 10 in points through the first seven games, checking in with a 4-2-1 record after a 37-17 win at the Jets. Since then, they've been near the bottom of the NFL in both points and yards.
The Vikings lost the next week against the Saints, with two costly turnovers paving the way. Cousins put up good numbers in that game, passing for 359 yards and two TDs. At the midpoint of the season, he had 2,521 passing yards (on pace for more than 5,000), with 16 touchdown passes and just four interceptions.