The first person Mike Zimmer was asked to evaluate during today's season-ending press conference was a rookie head coach by the name of Mike Zimmer.

The Vikings coach was pretty straightforward, per usual. According to Zimmer, Zimmer did some good things and some not so good things. But he never felt out of place as a first-year head coach at 57 (now 58).

"Honestly," he said, "I never felt overwhelmed from the day I walked in."

Zimmer, whose first head coaching job came 11 ½ months ago, said he was "lucky" for the support system of Vikings ownership, the front office and offensive coordinator Norv Turner, a former longtime NFL head coach.

"Are there some things that I would do differently? Sure," he said. "Did I make some mistakes? Sure. But I felt like each and every day I came to work that I gave this team and the fans and the organization the very best I could give them.

"I believe in my heart that I'll be even better next year with everything that I do just because I've been through all of these different things."

Zimmer admitted that there were things he didn't know. Not all head coaches have the capability to express that publicly.

"Were there things that surprised me? Sure," Zimmer said. "During games were there things that happened that the referee had to explain something to me? Yeah, but I don't think that's unique with any coach, let alone a first-year guy."

Zimmer was asked about the end of the Bills game, when Buffalo converted key third downs and a fourth-and-20 en route to a game-winning touchdown in the closing seconds. Zimmer had expressed regret after that game for not calling a timeout to regroup his defense before that fourth-and-20 conversion.

"I think hopefully I learned from that," Zimmer said. Today. "Everything was so helter skelter. A team shouldn't convert on fourth-and-20 but everything was so helter skelter at the time and it turned out to be such a critical play in the season and the game.

"Like Sunday when it was fourth-and-9 and it was kind of the same situation -everything was kind of helter skelter. The clock was going down, they were going up, we couldn't get the call, so I called timeout on that one. Now, [the Bears] converted the fourth down, but I think I learned from the Buffalo game in that situation.

"I felt like in that situation last week against Chicago that it was a time to do it and it didn't work out. So you say to yourself, 'Well, maybe if we don't call it.' I think you can second-guess yourself on a lot of different things."