MINNEAPOLIS -- Minnesota Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said Friday the Vikings "probably could have called something else" on the play that resulted in Teddy Bridgewater's game-ending fumble on Thursday night in Arizona, leaving the Vikings with a three-point loss while they were in field-goal range.
With 13 seconds left and no timeouts, the Vikings opted to call one more play to get kicker Blair Walsh closer than the 48-yard kick he could have attempted at the time. Zimmer and Bridgewater said Thursday night that the quarterback knew he couldn't take a sack or throw over the middle of the field, so the Vikings tried to throw to the sideline. Bridgewater took a seven-step drop, and with Mike Wallace covered, he waited for Kyle Rudolph and Jarius Wright to get to the right side of the field on crossing routes. Bridgewater was preparing to throw the ball away, he said, when Dwight Freeney got around left tackle Matt Kalil and knocked the ball out of his hand.
"You know, it's a play we practice every week for a situation like that," Zimmer said. "They had more people rushing in that particular play than normally when that happens. So, that was a little bit different. So, then we got beat. In retrospect, we probably could have called something else or kicked the field goal or whatever."
Walsh had connected on a 54-yard field goal earlier in the game, but has hit only 11 of his 22 kicks from 48 yards or longer in the last three seasons. Zimmer said he thought about kicking the field goal on third down, but "if we missed the field goal, I'm wrong -- we should have gotten closer.
"I did the best I thought we could do at that particular time. We studied that situation many times. To clock the ball in bounds, it's approximately 12 to 14 seconds, so we're right on the verge. I didn't feel there was any way we could throw the ball in bounds and still get a play off. So we were trying to get a little closer, play designed to get to the sideline. ... I felt good about that, and if we didn't get it, we could try the field goal from there."
The loss, which dropped the Vikings to 8-5, was the second time this year they've given up a fumble off a Bridgewater sack to end the game. On Oct. 4, the Vikings were searching for a game-tying field goal in Denver when T.J. Ward sacked Bridgewater on a blitz. And on Thursday night, the Cardinals -- who blitz more than any team in the league -- brought extra pressure on 65 percent of Bridgewater's dropbacks. According to ESPN Stats and Information, that's the fifth-highest single-game blitz rate in the NFL this year.
"If I knew that was going to happen, I probably would have done something different," Zimmer said.