MANKATO, Minn. -- When he became the ninth head coach in Minnesota Vikings history in January 2014, Mike Zimmer became the latest to try to clean up the team's long string of off-field trouble.
So last December, when cornerback Jabari Price became the latest Vikings player to be arrested and was suspended for the first two games of the 2015 season, it didn't sit well with Zimmer.
"We're disappointed first of all in what happened there, and we're trying to clean up all those kind of things off the field with the Vikings," Zimmer said. "We're trying to make this a team that our fans respect. We're trying to make this a team that our fans are proud of, and to have things like that happen are not good and extremely disappointing."
Price, who was arrested on suspicion of DUI the morning after the Vikings' final regular-season game last Dec. 28, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of careless driving this spring. He said on Saturday he had already appealed his two-game suspension, which was announced Friday, but the league had already denied it.
"Considering all the work we put in this offseason, I don't want to be a distraction. That's definitely what I don't want to be," Price said. "That's something I wasn't raised (to do). I thought, 'It couldn't be me. It just couldn't be me.' When I turn around, it's me now. I just have to put it behind me now."
According to USA Today, which keeps a database of NFL arrests, the Vikings have had more players arrested than any team in the league since 2000. Price became the 48th Vikings player to be arrested or cited in that time.