Zimmer Puts Retirement Rumors to Bed, Says He’ll Coach with “One Eye or Two”

Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer has had a terrible time since a scratch on his eye turned into what has been (Up until now, at least) an eight surgery ordeal. Zimmer originally scratched his eye during a loss to the Chicago bears, which ended up tearing his retina. He had a procedure to fix that tear, but had to undergo an emergency surgery about a month later to repair a completely detached retina (After a second procedure to repair a second tear).

In case you were wondering, people need their retinas. It has been speculated that Zimmer’s issues with multiple tears, procedures and the eventual detachment came from Zimmer essentially not resting and returning to work too quickly. At least, that’s what I gathered from reading this breakdown of the injury from a December Star Tribune article. It makes sense, then, that doctors essentially barred Zimmer from OTA’s this week as he recuperates. Raised blood pressure can hurt one’s recovery and even though Zimmer strikes me as the type of guy that would get more blood pressure spikes from being away from the team he loves than around them, it was a necessary step. Especially after Zimmer removed his eye-patch during a game last season in order to see the field better (Which was probably the source of that second tear).

Zimmer still isn’t out of the woods and he does still risk total blindness in that eye. So, of course people started floating the idea of retirement for the 60 year old head coach. Zimmer shot that idea down yesterday, telling reporters on a conference call that he’d be back “shortly” and that he’d still be the Vikings headcoach regardless.

“One eye or two, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be back. We can put that retiring thing to bed quickly.”

Indeed. While I can’t be the only one who finds it amazingly ironic that a team named the Vikings is being run by a one-eyed, all-powerful and elder white guy. It still has to be hard on Zimmer. So, here’s to hoping for a full recovery! Even though I’d still take a one-eyed Zimmer over the vast majority of coaches in the league today, it’d be nice if our head coach could see the entire field without turning in a half-circle (I can already see Packers fans furrowing their brows in an attempt to think of something clever to say about that).

In Zim We Trust, so it’s good to see that Zim’s trusting his doctors.

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