Part of any NFL team's youth movement is driving the guy in charge a little crazy with inconsistency.
Vikings coach Mike Zimmer elaborated on that a little bit with beat writers after today's practice.
"At times, we're like the Bad News Bears," Zimmer said. "We'll play so good and then all of a sudden it's like, `What in the world is going on?' So that part of trying to correct those things is really what eats at me. When we do it right, we're pretty darn good. But when we start losing our minds, it starts going south."
Pick any young, promising player and Zimmer said he probably could use the same words to describe what it's like trying to teach that player the schemes and concepts of a new coaching staff.
"I'm not saying what we're doing is the right way or the wrong way," Zimmer said. "But it's the way we're going to do it. It's all different for these guys. You hope you go through training camp and you get that consistency. But we have some young players that are still learning the game of football."
Like most young players or even veterans learning a new system, many Vikings players have reverted to more familiar techniques from the past when the pressure of live game action arrives. In other words, old habits are hard to break.
"It's all about doing the same thing over and over in repetition," Zimmer said. "If we can continually do that — I think [Matt] Kalil had a little bit of that in that `Oh, I got to fix this, I got to fix that' — once you get comfortable and you kind of get in rhythm, it happens a lot easier.
"A lot of these younger guys, for me, are I'm trying to teach them about playing football. Understanding what offenses are trying to do and understanding where we're supposed to be and understanding alignments and formations and motions and splits and sometimes maybe I give them too much information. But I have to do it, otherwise we won't grow as players."
