Amid 4-1 start, the Vikings keep an eye on staying fresh and healthy for grind ahead

Five weeks into a regular season they prepared for by holding starters out of preseason games, the Vikings are atop the NFC North. They can head into their bye week at 5-1 by beating a Dolphins team that will start third-string quarterback Skylar Thompson on Sunday. And the Vikings have enjoyed a run of good health that, at least to this point, has kept their veteran players on the field during the regular season after their new coach kept most of them off of it during the preseason.

The website Man Games Lost developed a metric called Lost Approximate Value, which uses the career production of injured players to determine how many significant contributors a team has lost during a given season. By that metric, only the Jaguars were less affected by injuries through the first four weeks of the season than the Vikings.

That the Vikings have kept most of their roster on the field through the start of the season isn't all that unusual, given their recent history. The real difference could come if coach Kevin O'Connell's staff can keep players fresh through the latest part of the season.

From 2009-21, only the Falcons lost fewer games to injury than the Vikings' 1,643, according to Man Games Lost. But in recent years, the Vikings' ability to keep players on the field came with a cost: Numerous sources had described a loss of trust between players and former head athletic trainer Eric Sugarman, who was fired in March. Linebacker Eric Kendricks' Jan. 10 comments about a "fear-based organization" reflected a locker room full of players who worried they'd jeopardize their standing by spending too much time receiving treatment in the training room or taking too long to return to the field.

Players fighting through fatigue and injury produced listless performances in December and January, missing the playoffs by a game in 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2021 while the 2017 and 2019 seasons ended with lopsided playoff losses.

The next task for the 2022 Vikings, as they try to return to the postseason for the first time since 2019, could be to lengthen their bench and help their veterans get a break.

O'Connell said this week the Vikings are "starting to look at some snap counts and usage of not only the skill players and the guys up front, but we've just got to manage it for sure." They have 11 defenders who've played at least 60% of their snaps through five games. Seven — Patrick Peterson, Camryn Bynum, Kendricks, Cameron Dantzler, Jordan Hicks, Chandon Sullivan and Danielle Hunter — have been on the field at least 80% of the time.

On offense, the Vikings started to increase Alexander Mattison's workload against the Bears, but they've kept Dalvin Cook, who has been playing with a harness since dislocating his left shoulder in Week 3, on the field 64.7% of the time. That mirrors his snap counts (if not quite his number of carries) from the Mike Zimmer era.

"It's a long season," O'Connell said. "Our goal is to have the best possible football team from a sports performance [standpoint], and how they can feel at their absolute best for that three-and-a-half-hour window every Sunday. It's easier said than done when you start talking about the grind of an NFL season."

Before his first season as Vikings head coach, O'Connell worked with executive player health and performance director Tyler Williams and head athletic trainer Uriah Myrie on a practice schedule that traded intensive 11-on-11 work for more on-field instructional sessions and periods where skill position players practiced at faster tempos while linemen kept their hitting in check. The Vikings held almost all of their starters out of their three preseason games, using joint practices with the 49ers and a scrimmage in TCO Stadium as their most important preparatory work.

They arrived at the start of the regular season in good health; it's worth wondering if players learning new offensive and defensive schemes would have been sharper at the start of the regular season with more on-field practice time or preseason snaps. But the Vikings seem to be betting they can master their new systems through the season and win as they go, rather than risking the loss of key contributors or the possibility of late-season decline on extra early work.

So far, their bet has mostly worked. Though they've emerged from uneven victories over the Lions, Saints and Bears talking about how they needed to be sharper, their 4-1 record includes four wins in the conference and a 3-0 record in the division. Of the Vikings' seven starters in their 30s, only three have been on injury reports: Harrison Smith missed the Lions game with a concussion, while Kendricks and Za'Darius Smith played against the Lions and Saints after being listed as questionable with toe and knee injuries, respectively.

The Vikings lost wide receiver Bisi Johnson to a torn ACL in training camp, and first-round pick Lewis Cine will miss the rest of the year after sustaining a compound fracture in his left leg during the Saints game in London. So far, though, the Vikings' injury reports have been almost completely free of the soft tissue injuries (such as hamstring, groin and calf strains) that can hamper players through the season.

"I think the bye week will come at a good time for our team to kind of reset, but what a challenge for us this week going down there [to Miami]," O'Connell said.

The Vikings listed four players on their first injury report of the week, and none of them missed all of their first practice on Wednesday. Miami listed 18; four missed practice because of injuries.

If the Vikings can retain those kinds of health advantages over their opponents in a month or two — perhaps with some good fortune and increased depth — they'll have reason to feel especially good about their plan.