After eight seasons, a Peoria native no longer fills the Minnesota Vikings’ head-coaching position. On Monday, the Vikings fired Mike Zimmer, according to reports.
A 31-17 victory Sunday over the Chicago Bears was not enough to save Zimmer’s job. The Vikings finished 8-9 this season. Zimmer, who was hired in 2014, finished 72-56-1. Zimmer was born in the late spring of 1956 in Peoria.
His family moved from Peoria when Zimmer was 3 and settled in Lockport, located just north of Joliet. That’s where Zimmer’s late father, Bill, took a job as an assistant football coach at Lockport Township High School.
The following year, 1960, he became head coach, a job he held until 1993. Bill Zimmer finished with 170 football victories at Lockport, where he also was head wrestling coach.
That’s a job he once held at Bradley University in Peoria. More college athletics:5 tough lessons from Bradley basketball’s near upset of Loyola Chicago The elder Zimmer graduated from Bradley, where he was a standout football player.
In the 1950s, Bradley offered him jobs as wrestling and assistant football coach. The school sponsors neither sport today. In four years as BU wrestling coach, Bill Zimmer shepherded two NCAA qualifiers.
In 1959, the year he departed for Lockport, the southern Illinois native was inducted into the university’s athletic hall of fame.
Before the Vikings hired him, Mike Zimmer spent 20 years as an NFL assistant coach. He played in college at Illinois State University.
Chicago Bears head coach Matt Nagy, left, talks with Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer, right, before an NFL football game on Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022, in Minneapolis.
(AP Photo/Bruce Kluckhohn) Fired The Bears coach doesn’t have Peoria ties, but a predecessor did. Zimmer wasn’t the only NFL coach fired Monday.
In fact, his sideline counterpart Sunday lasted about as long as he did. The Bears parted ways with fourth-year coach Matt Nagy, whose team finished 6-11 this season. Bears general manager Ryan Pace was also axed. Among the relatively recent Bears coaches is another Peoria native, Dick Jauron.
He guided the Monsters of the Midway from 1999 until 2003. Jauron was born on October 7, 1950, while his father, Bob Jauron, was head coach at Manual High School in Peoria.
The younger Jauron was born the day after Manual beat Kewanee in a big game. More in Peoria sports:Who’s in the top 6? Peoria-area power rankings for boys and girls high school basketball During the halftime pep talk, Bob Jauron made his team a promise: If it won, his players could name his impending newborn. That’s how Richard Manual Jauron came to be. A deal’s a deal, after all.
“My wife didn’t like it, but that’s the way it went,” Bob Jauron once told the Chicago Tribune. “She said it was a good thing we didn’t lose, or his middle name would be ‘Kewanee.'”
