If Mike Zimmer finds out that Michael Floyd's so-called kombucha tea defense was a lie, Floyd will have to find a new job. That's what the Vikings coach said when he talked to the Pioneer Press about Floyd's standing with the team.
"I said, 'If I find out you're lying to me, I'm going to cut you,'" Zimmer said.
As for whether he believes Floyd, Zimmer hemmed and hawed a little bit. "Do I believe it? I don't know how much tea he drank. I have no clue," he said. "I don't have any doubt why there'd be skepticism, but he told me that he wasn't [drinking]. That it was legit."
Floyd had to go to court earlier this month after failing an alcohol test three days before his house arrest was set to end. After initially proclaiming reports of a failed test as "totally false," Floyd released a statement confirming that he did, in fact, fail a test that revealed traces of alcohol in his system. He stated that "he drank several bottles of kombucha tea drinks, unaware that the drinks contain alcohol." The Vikings backed up Floyd's defense in court. (He was nevertheless found to be in violation and was sentenced to one day in jail.)
Vikings chief operating officer Kevin Warren wrote a letter to Floyd's attorney, Robert Feinberg, who attached it to a defense motion urging Scottsdale City Judge Statia Hendrix to cancel the hearing and reinstate electronic monitoring for the last five days of Floyd's 96-day home confinement.
Warren corroborates Floyd's claim that he was unaware kombucha tea contained alcohol when he drank several bottles while watching movies late into the early morning of June 11 at the Minnesota house of Vikings tight end Kyle Rudolph, his former college roommate at Notre Dame.
"After falling asleep, I awoke to the beeping of the home-monitoring machine, signaling that I must complete a test," Floyd wrote in an affidavit. "I had several sips of kombucha right after waking up, just before blowing into the home-monitoring testing machine. I had not eaten anything since noon on June 10.
"I received a call on June 12 from an administrator at Sentinel Advantage, informing me of the results of the three tests from the morning of June 11 and informing me that I missed a fourth test. Until I was contacted by the administrator at Sentinel Advantage about the report related to the morning of June 11, I had no knowledge that kombucha contained alcohol, or that some types of kombucha have a higher alcohol content than others."
Floyd was under house arrest and subject to alcohol tests as a result of the punishment stemming his being found guilty of extreme DUI. (He was sentenced to 24 days in jail and 96 days of house arrest.) Floyd was less than a week from completing the period of that house arrest when he failed the tests. The underlying charges stemmed from an arrest in December of 2016, when Floyd was found asleep at the wheel of his car at a traffic light.
