The assistant coach for the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals, Adam Zimmer, has been found dead at his home after dying suddenly at just 38 years old.
The NFL team announced the loss in a statement on Tuesday, per USA Today.
“The Bengals are saddened to learn the devastating news about team offensive analyst Adam Zimmer,” it reads.
The statement includes a message from the Cincinnati Bengals’ owner Mike Brown.
Brown spoke of Zimmer and his father, longtime NFL coach Mike Zimmer’s history with the team.
“Our organization has had the privilege of knowing and working with the Zimmer family for 15 years,” Brown said.
“We have the highest regard for Mike and Adam, and we are saddened by this tragic news.
“Mike and Adam were more than coaches for us — they were friends.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the Zimmer family at this time.”
One of Adam Zimmer’s sisters, Corri Zimmer White, wrote in a Tuesday Instagram post that her brother died “unexpectedly.”
“I can’t believe I’m writing this,” Zimmer White wrote.
“I lost my big brother yesterday.
“The kindest, sweetest, family-loving, sports-obsessed soul there ever was.
“My heart is shattered and it hurts so bad. I don’t know how to juggle being a mom to one-year-old twin boys and the grief of losing my brother so unexpectedly.
“I’m so lost, I’m so overwhelmed, I’m so heartbroken.
“My brother was one of my best friends, especially after my mom died, we became so close.”
The Mendota Heights Police Department (MHPD) was performing a welfare check on Zimmer, who lived in Minnesota, police chief Wayne Wegener Jr. said, according to ESPN.
Once police got to Zimmer’s home on Monday, he had already died.
“There was nothing suspicious [about the death], and there didn’t appear to be any evidence of foul play,” Wegener said, according to the Star Tribune.
Adam Zimmer spent years working with the Vikings during his father’s time there, but when Mike Zimmer was fired, most of his staff was also let go, according to the Associated Press.
Adam Zimmer was among those dismissed, according to the Star Tribune.
“Disregard the familial connection,” former Vikings linebacker Chad Greenway told the AP.
“It’s really just about him being a good coach.
“It wouldn’t have mattered who the head coach was.
“Adam was a good coach no matter what.”
“He was respectful of the game and the career that I had before that he got there,” Greenway noted.
“He was always working with you and not coaching at you, always trying to make the individual better and the team better.
“He was really smart when it came to the scheme, but more importantly he was a great person who always cared about you as a person.”
The MHPD’s Chief Wegener said authorities are “not investigating this as a suspicious death.”
The Hennepin County medical examiner will rule on and release his cause of death at a later date.
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