Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer did not conduct a press conference on Tuesday in which he attempted to sound a note of optimism after what has been a disappointing performance by Minnesota’s starters in the preseason.

“I think we have reason to feel good,” said Zimmer, despite the evidence of three preseason games in which the Vikings starting offense scored a total of three points on twelve possessions, “in that we are not yet in our cold, cold graves.”

Pressed to expand on this thin comfort by the dubious assembled journalists, Zimmer elaborated.

“I mean, look, did we invest a lot in the offensive line this year? Maybe paid top-shelf prices for rail-quality tackles? Didn’t we fucking just,” Zimmer said. “There’s a real question about whether Mike Remmers can beat out Willie Beavers for the starting right tackle job. First, Remmers versus Beavers sounds like some kind of niche porn genre – and indeed this contest is probably best viewed in that light, to be honest – and more to the point, Willie Beavers was a fourth round draft pick in 2016 that we cut in last year’s preseason because he was so bad he made resolute men of faith abandon their god, for what benevolent deity would allow an abomination of this kind into the world? Think I’m kidding? Those were his position coach’s exact words, right before he quit the team and became a mercenary in Southeast Asia. Got a Christmas card from him written on – some kind of leather? God I hope it was leather. Please let it have been leather. Anyway, Beavers is back and might win the starting job because the world can often seem a cruel joke. But,” Zimmer did not add defiantly, “where there’s life, there’s hope.

“Now, a pessimist might say that what’s happening at left tackle actually repudiates the very concept of hope, revealing it, as HL Mencken said, to be the worst of all evils, for it prolongs the torments of men,” Zimmer did not continue to the startled press corps. “But I actually view the back injury that’s kept Riley Reiff out of the starting lineup as a blessing, because it’s distracted people from the fact that he has no arms. I don’t mean that literally, of course; he has arms, they’re just nine inches long. He has to be fed by an assistant trainer, one of whom he bit the other day. Had to put the poor kid down as a precautionary measure, and we’ve got Reiff in quarantine until we can get a muzzle big enough to fit him.

“But we’re confident in his backup,” Zimmer did not go on as the press corps looked nervously at each other. “And by that I mean we are confident that he exists. His name is Rashod Hill. I can say that with absolute certainty. Take it to the bank that we have a right tackle named Rashod Hill. Is he any good? Well, the Jaguars cut him from their practice squad, so draw what conclusions you will from that. But he definitely exists, which is the first step toward being a great offensive tackle.

“Now, this situation may seem dire, but we’ve seen worse. We sent four offensive tackles to injured reserve last year, and that was after our long-time starter at right tackle retired. Offensive line meetings were like a medical tent after Antietam Creek – maimed veterans passing jugs of whiskey back and forth while terrified rookies tried to keep from crying. I went in to check on things and to try to, you know, buck them up a bit, and stumbled over a bucket of blood and fell into a pile of amputated legs. And that was my best visit to the line unit last year.

“Also, our highest paid offensive linemen, Alex Boone, is, as it turns out, how can I put this? no fucking good at all, so there’s a chance that we’ll spend the year paying top dollar for backups at both tackles and left guard,” Zimmer did not say. “All of which could be fairly classified as, eh, mixed news.

“Still, worse things happen at sea,” Zimmer did not say, nor adding darkly, “and I should know.”

“Let’s look on the bright side, though, shall we?” Zimmer did not admonish the press. “Teddy Bridgewater might be able to play this year, which is an astonishing development. I honestly thought he was going to have to make his living playing Long John Silver at theme parks, but medical science continues to amaze. And our experiment with Mackensie Alexander, in which we test whether it’s possible to draft a superlative athlete who has never even seen a football and make him a proficient professional defensive back within two years, has reached a conclusion: you absolutely fucking cannot. But at least we know now, and have made a definitive contribution to science. We’re planning on releasing Mackensie into the wild later this year, or at any rate dumping him in the parking lot of an abandoned strip mall.”

“And we’ve made some schematic improvements,” Zimmer did not continue to the agog press corps. “We’ve made the radical decision to play another safety next to Harrison Smith, as opposed to our past practice of kidnapping the drunkest rodeo clown we could find and pushing him onto the field as a kind of commentary on the commercialization of sports. I’ve since been informed that we have no other ‘safeties’ as such, just a parcel of blind lunatics who made their way into our practice facility through means known only to them, but we’ve gotten used to their screeching and frankly I don’t have the heart to send them back out into the cold.

“We’ll need them, too, since we’re largely only going with two linebackers in most formations this year. This isn’t really a strategic choice as it is a necessity, because although we’re carrying about eleven linebackers only two of them should be allowed near a football field at any level of play. Fun fact: our linebackers were so bad last year that watching them made me try to pluck out my own eye,” Zimmer did not say to the horrified journalists. “It was…cathartic. You should try it.

“Anyway, I wouldn’t have thought Anthony Barr could regress as far as he did last year,” Zimmer did not continue as the press corps hastily gathered their things and made for the exits, “but then I walked into our locker room and founding him shitting in his helmet, and here we are. We live in hope that he’ll be better this year.

“And that’s really what I’d like to leave you with,” Zimmer did not say to the journalists now making a panicked dash out the exits. “In the fell clutches of circumstances, we have not winced or cry aloud/ under the bludgeonings of chance our heads are bloody but unbowed. Things may look bleak now, but I promise you, we will fight our way through, or die in the attempt. Even money which way this turns out. I will now take no questions.”