His right eye on mend, Mike Zimmer turns his focus to Vikings' mistakes

There has been no shortage of discussion about the risks involved with Vikings coach Mike Zimmer's right eye surgery, but the most unbelievable part is that Zimmer might not have even discovered his torn retina if it wasn't for another eye injury earlier this year.

"It was basically at the Chicago game [Oct. 31]," Zimmer said this past week. "I scratched my eye during the game and then I was probably lucky I was able to have the doctors check it out, and they found out I had a torn retina.

"There's a good possibility that I could have went blind in that eye if I didn't get it taken care of."

Zimmer said that his recovery has been going well and he has been in constant communication with his doctors, who allowed him to make the trip to Florida to coach Sunday's game at Jacksonville.

"I had the fourth surgery on [Dec. 2] after the game and had a checkup [Dec. 3] and everything looked good," he said. "I'm planning on going to the game, yes. We'll see what the doctor says and we'll kind of go from there."

Zimmer missed a game as Vikings coach for the first time when the team lost to Dallas 17-15 at home on Dec. 1. He said that he saw some good things in that game, but the things that went wrong looked all too familiar.

"We played with a lot of fight, but we have to quit doing these things to beat ourselves," he said. "We have penalties on third-and-1, we had penalties on special teams that backs the offense up inside the 20-yard line. We fumbled a punt on the 8-yard line.

While Zimmer still believes the team, with its 6-6 record, has a chance to make the playoffs, he is working under the assumption that the team has to win out and finish 10-6.

"Yeah, well you know, the biggest thing right now is I have hope that we play this week and win and then we'll go on next week and get ready to play then," Zimmer said. "We have to take one game at a time, we have to approach every game like it's the playoffs. Every game has to be with the upmost urgency, and in order to do that we have to be more disciplined as a football team.

"We have to quit playing splintered offensively with different segments and getting penalties on special teams, and defensively we have to continue playing the way we're playing."

The Vikings enter Week 14 sitting in eighth place in the NFC and trail Tampa Bay (7-5), the sixth-place team and the second wild card at this point, by one game. They also have Washington in front of them by a half-game. The Redskins (6-5-1) have a head-to-head tiebreaker after beating the Vikings, but it almost definitely won't matter because of Washington's tie.

The Vikings are two games behind the Lions (8-4) for the NFC North, and Detroit also has the tiebreaker after winning both meetings. The Vikings are tied with Green Bay for second place. The one benefit the Vikings have in that regard is that the Lions have to play the Bears at home but then face the New York Giants and the Cowboys on the road before finishing with the Packers at home.

It has been another difficult week for Vikings injuries, as star safety Harrison Smith and center Joe Berger are out. But Zimmer said he cannot worry about who isn't on the field.

"All I'm going to worry about is the guys that are here and how we can try to fix the issues that we have," He said. "And we have some issues, and we have to fix them. The biggest thing is, which I talked to the team about today, we have to play as a team. We don't have a lot of margin for error, and so we can't make these mistakes that we're making because it's causing us to lose games. That's going to be, for the next four weeks, my mantra going forward."

Zimmer was asked if he thinks the offensive line has started to play better, as the rushing stats show.

"Yeah, except Zac Kerin goes in on one play and gets a penalty, and then we get a penalty [on Adam Boone] on third-and-1, then a penalty [on Jeremiah Sirles] on the two-point play to tie the football game," Zimmer said, echoing that the team continues to hurt itself. "You know, we get a penalty and it backs us up. When we get behind the schedule on offense we have a hard time making those plays to get us back on schedule. The percentages on third down go way down, and everything. We have to eliminate these plays that are hurting our football team. We're either going to eliminate them, or I'm going to eliminate the player."

JOTTINGS

• When Shahid Khan bought the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2011, former owner Wayne Weaver said he would only sell the team to someone who would keep it in Jacksonville. At the time there was also talk of the Vikings moving as well, but both have stayed put while the Rams moved from St. Louis back to Los Angeles.

• Vikings interim offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur was asked what was lost when center Joe Berger couldn't play because of a concussion and what he saw from Nick Easton, who will again replace Berger on Sunday. "He's a very veteran guy that has played well for many years," Shurmur said of Berger. "So, when a guy like that leaves — I played center myself, so I know the importance of being able to go in there and direct things. I thought Nick did a good job by replacing Joe and he'll be one week better this week."

• Vikings defensive coordinator George Edwards talked about the scrambling ability of Jaguars quarterback Blake Bortles, who has run for 323 yards and two scores this season: "He's got the ability to not only be efficient running the ball down the field, but he makes guys miss. He'll escape up inside. He'll come outside. So, we'll have to do an excellent job with our front in the rush lanes."

• Matthew Hurt, the Rochester John Marshall sophomore basketball standout and the brother of the Gophers' Michael Hurt, scored 39 points in a 79-45 victory at crosstown rival Mayo on Friday.

• Washington State, the Gophers' Holiday Bowl opponent, is coached by Mike Leach, who coached Texas Tech in the 2006 Insight Bowl, when the Gophers blew a 35-7 halftime lead and lost in overtime, which eventually led to Glen Mason getting fired.