Try to imagine meeting all day with your staff to come up with a game plan for an opponent, practicing it all week, and then having veteran players decide to scrap that plan on the field and implement a game plan they feel is better.
That's exactly what happened with the Minnesota Vikings this weekend, and the situation is already being referred to as "The Mutiny in Minnesota." Mike Zimmer and his staff decided to have veteran corner Xavier Rhodes shadow Green Bay wide receiver Jordy Nelson around all day in an effort to limit his touches. Instead, the Vikings defensive backs got together and decided to do things their own way, and that resulted in Nelson going off for seven catches and nearly 150 yards...in the first half.
Afterwards, Rhodes explained the decision to defy the coaching staff.
"We felt as a team, as players, we came together and we felt like we'd never done that when we played against the Packers. Us as DBs felt like we could handle him," Rhodes explained after the game, via the Chicago Tribune. "We felt as DBs that we could stay on our side and cover him. In the beginning, we'd always played against them and played our sides, we never followed, so that's what we felt as DBs. That's what we went with."
In the second half, they went back to the game plan for Nelson that the coaches had originally come up with, which resulted in Nelson getting just two catches for a grand total of nine yards in the second half.
Former NFL head coach and current anaylst for NFL Network Brian Billick explained later that these types of situations aren't all that rare in the NFL.
Mutiny in Minnesota: pic.twitter.com/0g82fVbn3N
— Brian Billick (@CoachBillick)
Mutiny in Minnesota: pic.twitter.com/0g82fVbn3N
— Brian Billick (@CoachBillick) December 26, 2016
">December 26, 2016
Asked how he would respond to the situation from a coaches perspective, Billick noted: "You've got to really take control of your organization, and make it very clear to the players - not in a finger pointing way and not in a demeaning way - but going, 'Guys, what is you were trying to accomplish here?'"
"Kind of hold the mirror up to them, and once they see that and what they were doing really showed a sign of panic, to a certain degree, then they'll probably come back and realize that it wasn't the smartest thing to do, and probably not do it again."