MINNEAPOLIS -- Mike Zimmer's evaluation of the Minnesota Vikings' season, after the team lost eight of its final 11 games, was bound to take longer than two days, so Zimmer was not going to come to his season-ending news conference with concrete answers to all the questions the Vikings must solve over the coming weeks and months.
His answer to the first question he got -- about Pat Shurmur's future as the offensive coordinator -- probably wasn't going to include a revelation about a final decision. But the way Zimmer talked about Shurmur, and the dynamics at play in the Vikings' offense, certainly suggest there's a good chance Shurmur will have his interim tag removed in the near future.
First, here's what Zimmer said when asked about Shurmur: "I'm going to take some time this week to try to figure out things, step back a little bit where I can recharge my thinking of where we want to go and how we want to do things, not just with Pat but with everybody. I do think that Pat did a very, very good job, especially under the circumstances he was put in. I think offensively we improved a lot in the passing and running game [in] the statistics [from] when we started going and things we've done after that. He had a great relationship with Sam. I think the offensive players respect him. We'll just figure all those things out."
Next, it's important to consider what else is going on here: Zimmer said Tuesday that Sam Bradford "has earned the right to be the starting quarterback" after Bradford set a NFL single-season record for completion percentage and threw for a career-high 3,877 yards in 15 games. Bradford is signed for 2017, and given Teddy Bridgewater's still-uncertain recovery timetable from a catastrophic left knee injury, the Vikings figure to go forward with Bradford as their starter.
The Vikings' decision to trade for Bradford was thanks in large part to Shurmur's input when he was still the Vikings' tight ends coach. Zimmer made Shurmur the interim coordinator, following Norv Turner's resignation on Nov. 2, because he'd been Bradford's coordinator in both St. Louis and Philadelphia. And after playing for five different coordinators in seven years, Bradford has a chance to create with Shurmur in Minnesota the thing he most often has lacked in his career: stability.
It's true the Vikings made a marginal statistical improvement from Turner to Shurmur -- they averaged 18.56 points and 332 yards per game with Shurmur, compared to 15.86 and 293.3 -- but they were still 23rd in the league in scoring offense after the switch, according to ESPN Stats and Information. The Vikings were still operating within the framework of Turner's playbook when Shurmur took over, and they could make a more complete directional shift if Shurmur had the reins this offseason, but the strongest argument for Shurmur probably remains his relationship with Bradford.
The Vikings appear set to move forward with the quarterback in 2017, as they try to get the most out of a roster that can still be very good with some refinements. Doing that means setting Bradford up for success, and the quarterback made clear last month that he hopes Shurmur gets the full-time job. If the Vikings do decide to keep Shurmur -- and the guess here is they will -- it figures to be at least partly driven by an attempt to create a firm foundation for their quarterback.