Louis Riddick breaks down why Minnesota's defense is so dominant on all three levels and has made them legitimate Super Bowl contenders. (1:35)

MINNEAPOLIS -- You talk to Bill Parcells about his extended coaching family, about the fact that Bill Belichick, Tom Coughlin and Sean Payton won a combined seven Super Bowls on their own, and he will usually offer up a quick reminder. Don't forget about Mike Zimmer, he will say.

Zimmer was given his first pro football job by then-Dallas Cowboys coach Barry Switzer, and he helped the man win a ring before his ol' buddy Jerry Jones sacked him. But you know how that story goes. It sounds a whole lot better to say a man emerged from the Bill Parcells tree than from the Barry Switzer tree or the Chan Gailey tree or the Dave Campo tree.

But someday in the not-too-distant future, there could be a Mike Zimmer tree that enhances his legacy as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings, one of only two 4-0 teams in the NFL. On Monday night, after he undressed the rookie coach of the New York Giants, Ben McAdoo, about as thoroughly as he undressed Coughlin last season, Zimmer stood alone in a hallway and spoke about the possibility of doing something even Bud Grant couldn't do -- winning the whole thing.

"I don't know if we're as good as Denver was defensively last year," Zimmer told ESPN.com, "but we've got some depth on our defense and some guys who will really compete and fight. I thought our team did a lot of good things last year, but I didn't know if we were ready. I don't know if we were really ready to go that far. This year's team? I don't know how far we can go, either, but this team is kind of special."

At 60, Zimmer looks and sounds like an old-school drill instructor running detention at your local high school. His raspy voice betrays a full life of barking orders on a football field. He paid his dues the Bruce Arians way, the hard way, working for 35 consecutive years as a college and pro assistant. Imagine that. Imagine being as good at something as Zimmer is at coaching and spending 3½ decades answering to a superior who probably isn't, you know, superior.

Mike Zimmer's defense has allowed just 50 total points in four games. Hannah Foslien/Getty Images

Zimmer was an assistant for nearly as long as McAdoo was alive before McAdoo got his big break with the Giants (at age 38), and frankly, it showed in the Vikings' 24-10 victory in their thunder dome of a new ballpark, U.S. Bank Stadium, which is going to sound like a dozen jet engines to a visiting postseason team in January. The Giants were a disorganized and undisciplined mess -- in part because Odell Beckham Jr. ignored his coach's order to cool it -- and hey, in fairness, McAdoo deserves a year or two to establish his program and control over his star players.

Only this was no game and no time to learn on the job. Long one of the league's best defensive minds, Zimmer has built a unit on the more violent side of the ball that might not be the 2015 Broncos or the 2000 Ravens or the 1985 Bears but something close enough.

The Vikings have beaten three consecutive Super Bowl starters in Aaron Rodgers, Cam Newton, and two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning, who also was humiliated in December by this very Minnesota defense. Last week, Newton was sacked eight times and intercepted three times, while his most talented receiver, Kelvin Benjamin, was completely shut out. Manning on Monday night didn't throw a touchdown pass and spent too much of the game ducking and flinching and just getting rid of the damn thing. Beckham? He had three catches for 23 yards, or only eight more yards than he surrendered on yet another personal foul. Suspended for the Minnesota blowout last season, Beckham effectively missed this one too.

"I only worry about my players," Zimmer said in his news conference when asked about Monday's extracurriculars between Beckham and cornerback Xavier Rhodes, who won this fight in a knockout. "I don't care about the other team's players."

And why should he when his players appear focused enough and team-minded enough to take the Vikings where they haven't been since Brett Favre threw that interception in the NFC Championship Game?

It's more than a little hard to believe too. The Vikings lost their promising young quarterback, Teddy Bridgewater, and one the greatest running backs of all time, Adrian Peterson, and yet they have joined the defending champs in Denver as the only 4-0 teams, despite a circle of skill-position players who are suspect enough to notarize Zimmer as coach of the quarter-year.

The Giants rushed for just 78 yards against the Vikings, and New York managed just 5.8 yards per pass. Hannah Foslien/Getty Images

Zimmer's starting quarterback is Sam Bradford, a box-office bust who moves around the pocket about as nimbly as your grandfather negotiating a flight of stairs. His starting running back is Jerick McKinnon out of Georgia Southern. His starting receivers are Stefon Diggs, a fifth-rounder out of Maryland, and Charles Johnson, a seventh-rounder out of Grand Valley State. His tight end is Kyle Rudolph -- OK, a second-rounder out of Notre Dame, but still, a guy who has never cleared 500 receiving yards in a season.

"We're not going to concern ourselves with stats," Zimmer said. "We're concerned about wins."

Out in the hallway, this son of a high school coach started talking about his general manager, Rick Spielman, and the selfless players the Vikings keep recruiting and developing for their program.

"Our guys want to do good so someone else can do good," Zimmer said. "I always tell them, 'Do your job so someone else can have success doing their job,' and they've taken that to heart. I say things to the team and then I hear my players repeat it to the media, and that means they're at least listening to me.

"Every Wednesday when we win, I give them breakfast sandwiches; Marvin Lewis did it when I was in Cincinnati. And I have a sign up that says, 'You take care of me, I take care of you.' So when we win, I take care of these guys. When we win, I want them to feel special; and when we lose, I want them to feel as bad as I do."

Zimmer has felt the searing postseason pain of a devastating defeat more than once. He was in Dallas with Parcells when Tony Romo dropped that field goal snap in the final seconds of what appeared to be a sure victory over Seattle. And of course, he was right there with his Vikings last season when the Blair Walsh Project-ile went wide left on a chip shot that should've eliminated those same Seahawks.

Walsh went wide left again Monday night, making a nervous man of his coach.

"I wish I knew," Zimmer said of a potential solution to his kicker's problems. "We need to make those or it's going to bite us in the rear end."

The kicker might be the only man standing between the Vikings and a deep postseason run.

Somehow, some way, Zimmer's offensive coordinator, Norv Turner, has Bradford looking competent and confident. Spielman has pieced together a defense out of the John Elway playbook. And Zimmer has made a fool out of all the owners and executives who passed on him over the years.

He got his first head coaching job in 2014 and won the Vikings' first division title since 2009 last season. Now he fields a contender that didn't blink when its starting quarterback and all-time great running back went down with injuries.

"I think this team likes to win," Zimmer said. "I think they like to compete. I think they like to go out there and prove to everybody that they can be talked about with some of the better teams in the league."

Before he was done in his news conference, the winning coach said he wasn't "handing out any medals tonight," a line that sounded borrowed from a mentor, Bill (No Medals for Trying) Parcells. The Minnesota Vikings are for real, ladies and gentlemen, which is another way of delivering this Parcellsian piece of advice:

Don't forget about Mike Zimmer.