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Homesick Minnesota Vikings Clearly Regret Taking Euro Business Trip
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- Homesick Minnesota Vikings Clearly Regret Taking Euro Business Trip
Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
The Minnesota Vikings are back in Eagan, after a two game business trip overseas that included stops in Both Dublin, Ireland and London, England. They finished the international swing 1-1, thanks to a last minute comeback on British soil vs the Browns last Sunday.
From the beginning, it was an unprecedented venture, and one the league was eyeing very closely. Afterall, the Vikings rank near the top of the league in organizational happiness, since Kevin O'Connell arrived as head coach. If any team could make the multi-week trip a success for both themselves and the league, it was Minnesota.
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When news broke initially that the MN Vikings would be playing back-to-back games in Europe, O'Connell and others inside TCO Performance Center played it off as a competitive advantage , and actively pushed that narrative both publicly and through NFL insiders.
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Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
Instead of playing away games in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, the Vikings would play in what they expected to be mostly neutral sites. As far as how to handle an extended international football vacation, everyone pointed to Paul Martin and the team's operations staff as the ideal men and women for the job.
Minnesota Vikings bit off more of Europe they could chew
In theory, all that sounded great and it even made sense. But in practice, the Minnesota Vikings found out pretty quickly that this trip would be far from normal and increasingly taxing on everyone involved, the longer the team remained outside the USA.
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From the sounds of it, this is NOT something the team would ever do again, nor is it an adventure that they'd recommend the NFL lay at the feet of any other organization. Let's start with Jonathan Greenard, immediately after the Vikings' victory last Sunday in London.
Reporter : "In the future if you've got to play [overseas] twice in a season, would you prefer it to be back to back [again]?"
Greenard : "Yeah, I would be the first to say that I would not like to do back to back. But that's not in my control. Ultimately, someone had to do it. It was us. But at the end of the day, we made the best of it."
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But if you thought Greenard was the only homesick Viking in Europe last week, you would be very, very wrong. Jordan Addison bailed on the team facilities while the Vikings were in London, failing to return in time for a walkthrough.
Location of Vikings hotel in London was far from ideal
That resulted in the 3rd year wide receiver being benched for the first quarter of Sunday's game against Cleveland. Obviously, missing a team walkthrough unannounced is unacceptable under just about any conditions, but given the Minnesota Vikings setup for game two of their European swing didn't make coming and going very easy.
Instead of being located near Tottenham Hotspur Stadium or anywhere near the London area, the Vikings were posting up at Hanbury Manor on the rural English countryside, about 1.5 hours away from London, either by public transport (which included multiple connecting trains and buses) or automobile.
The trip got so long that Kevin O'Connell was counting down "the sleeps" until the team went home, first mentioning the countdown publicly on Friday at his press conference when he noted early that there were only two sleeps remaining until their flight back to the states.
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After the victory vs Cleveland in London, he opened his postgame locker room speech with, "ZERO SLEEPS LEFT" and the entire locker room roared.
Nobody flinched. #Skol pic.twitter.com/0z8PFcBEVM
— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) October 5, 2025
"Fellas, make no mistake about it. I know how long this trip has been. I know how long it's been. Let me just give you some good news, by the way… ZERO SLEEPS!!"
In the end, one thing is clear. The Minnesota Vikings were regretting their two-week trip to Europe shortly after it started. You can blame it on homesickness, amenities or injuries… but at the end of the day, planning a work trip for 200 people is going to be taxing.
And while the game isn't going to stop growing internationally anytime soon, I think it is pretty clear that, if NFL teams had it their way, playing games outside of the United States would cease immediately.
Receiver Justin Jefferson , the team's emotional heartbeat, tried his best. He said Sunday that "it definitely was a great trip, even though it was very long and a little tiring." Soft-spoken safety Theo Jackson bluntly said "it sucks" to go so long without seeing his family, and trying to navigate a six-hour time difference for video calls.
"They understand it," Jackson said, "but it still doesn't take away how much it sucks."
"It was tough," tight end T.J. Hockenson said. "You're not eating the way you normally eat. You're not getting the recovery you normally get. You're not seeing the people you normally see. You're not getting the 'juice' you usually get. There's so many things that go into it. But we talked about it all week. There's so many excuses. You can point to one. You can point to two. You can point to 20. At the end of the day, it's like, 'Let's grind. Let's not seek comfort.'"
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