The number stands at eight, and hopefully it stays there.
Via Ben Goessling of ESPN.com, Vikings coach Mike Zimmer disclosed on Saturday at a youth football camp hosted by his foundation that he has had an eighth procedure on his eye following a detached retina suffered last season. Zimmer said he hopes the latest surgery on his right eye will be his last. He also said, “I’ve thought that before.”
This time around, doctors removed an oil bubble from his eye and inserted a gas bubble. Zimmer won’t be able to fly for six weeks.
The eye issues became the most personally impactful problem for a coach who encountered plenty of adversity in 2016, his third season with the team. The disclosure of an eighth surgery comes on the same day that the Minneapolis Star Tribune posted a column from Patrick Reusse that questions whether Zimmer truly is a “thick-skinned straight shooter” by summarizing Zimmer’s first two years on the job, meandering through the well-known events of Year Three, pointing out that Zimmer became angry when a column from the St. Paul Pioneer Press questioned whether he had fallen victim to the “God Syndrome” that afflicted multiple of his Minnesota predecessors, and abruptly ending without much/any analysis of what the coming season means to Zimmer’s future with the team.
Here’s what the coming season means to Zimmer’s future with the team: He needs to get back to exceeding expectations or Zimmer’s future with the team will be limited. While last year’s misadventures can be chalked up in large part to one calamity after another, the abrupt (and still largely unexplained) resignation of offensive coordinator Norv Turner and the failure of the defense in too many key spots (particularly in a pair of losses to a Lions team the Vikings owned as thoroughly as the Ford family does) puts Zimmer on the fringes of the hot seat. While it would take a few-and-fairly-far-between 3-13 or 4-12 Vikings debacle for Zimmer to be fired in or after the 2017 season, a season on the wrong side of .500 would surely put him on the short list of coaches facing an up-or-out mandate in 2018.
The good news is that, with the Vikings in that middling cut of teams that have no clear expectations one way or the other for the coming campaign, a second straight season without a postseason appearance won’t be viewed as total failure. But if Zimmer intends to double his tenure with the Vikings and have an outside shot at trebling it, he’ll need to get the team back on the right side of .500 sooner than later.
