Of all the things that stand out on the 2023 Minnesota Vikings schedule, two that really pop off the page the most are the Week 2 Thursday nighter at Philadelphia and the bye week not arriving until Week 13. In the eyes of head coach Kevin O’Connell, the two go hand in hand as his plan is to prepare ahead of time to be ready for the Eagles on short rest and then implement a “mini bye” before the 10-game gauntlet that precedes the official bye.
“I don’t think there’s really any downside to it knowing with a 17-game season it can be a grind at times. We’ve got a plan for what those practice weeks look like through that kind of 10-game stretch. After that Thursday Week 2 game against the Eagles we’ll give our guys a little bit of a mini bye and then we’ll be getting after it for 10 straight weeks, including some primetime games, some late travel, things like that where we’ve got to account for whatever we can to try to ease some of the uncomfortable parts of the schedule for our players,” O’Connell told Vikings.com’s Tatum Everett.
“And then when we get to that bye, make sure we maximize it because coming out of that bye you hope you’re ready to make your stretch run to be playing your best football in December.”
Left tackle Christian Darrisaw doesn’t see any downside to the late bye.
“I feel like it’s kind of perfect,” said Darrisaw. “We get to play those 12 games and then when 13 hits we get to rest our bodies and finish out the end of the season and make that playoff push to the Super Bowl, so I feel like that late bye week is at the right time.”
The other aspect of the schedule that pops off the page are the five primetime games. It could be six depending how the NFL schedules Minnesota at Cincinnati in Week 15.
“I love the fact that he league really rewarded us with those five primetime games,” said O’Connell. “We got another 3:25 start at home against the Chiefs, so I really look at it like six national TV opportunities to put our best out there.
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