LANDOVER, MD. – Mike Zimmer answered questions while gazing at the floor, his right eye red from a recent surgery. He wore all black, a color that not so long ago would have bespoken single-mindedness but on Sunday morphed into something funereal.
Five weeks into his third season as an NFL head coach, Zimmer had a battered Vikings team atop the NFL at 5-0. The surge seemed nothing less than a continuation of his coaching magnum opus. In three seasons, he had improved the Vikings from embarrassing to competent to contending to, now, it seemed, a threat to win it all.
Sunday afternoon, Zimmer coached the Vikings to a fourth straight loss, and that quickly they are 5-4, stuck ankle-deep in the league's mediocrity, lacking an offensive line, a running game, a reliable kicker and the defensive fearsomeness that had previously made their most gut-churning injuries irrelevant.
In the four weeks since the Vikings entered their bye week undefeated and Zimmer placed stuffed animals around the complex to remind his players not to become "fat cats," they have lost four straight seemingly winnable games, casting this season and the direction of Zimmer's program into question.
"I'm concerned, obviously," he said. "But I still believe. I believe that we do a couple of things here and a couple of things there and we're going to win games. I see it every week in the NFL. I just feel like if we can get over the hump, if we can just keep fighting until we do, that positive things will happen.
"But it doesn't look like that right now."
The team's gumption shouldn't be in question. The Vikings came back from a 14-0 deficit on the road to take a 20-14 lead. They moved down the field in the final minute to position themselves for a pass into the end zone before the pocket collapsed twice around Sam Bradford, making the final Washington 26, Vikings 20.
They have withstood dire injuries to the offensive line, their star running back and their franchise quarterback. They had their offensive coordinator leave at midseason, the kind of move that would be called traitorous if NFL coaches didn't publicly protect each other.