Vikings' Mike Zimmer ready to move past talk about eye
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. -- Mike Zimmer doesn't want to talk about the eye anymore.
The Minnesota Vikings' coach returned to work Monday and had shed the bandage over his right eye by Wednesday morning, when he held his first media conference since missing last week's game against the Dallas Cowboys to undergo emergency surgery for a detached retina.
How is Zimmer feeling? "Great," he said.
What'd he learn from his latest follow-up appointment? "Good to go."
Might he coach Sunday at Jacksonville from an upstairs booth instead of the sideline? "I don't know. The doctors talked to me about something, but let's talk about Jacksonville, huh?"
What was the experience like last Wednesday, when he started to lose vision, leading doctors to move up his third surgery on the eye? "I could tell it was getting worse. That's all."
What was it like missing his first game coaching? "I really want to talk about Jacksonville. But yeah, you put all the work in, and the reason why you do these things are for game day, so that's the difficult part of not being able to be with the team you're trying to prepare."
Zimmer then began speaking unprompted about the challenge posed by the Jaguars, whom the Vikings probably need to beat -- along with everybody else the next month -- to keep their playoff hopes alive after losing six of their past seven games.
Follow Tom Pelissero on Twitter @TomPelissero.
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