HOUSTON – The Vikings’ week began under orders to evacuate their practice facility, after word came from the NFL they might have been exposed to COVID-19 from an opponent that had likely used infected players.
The Vikings shuttered their opulent headquarters for two days, shifted game-planning sessions to home offices and reconfigured a practice schedule that traded an integral day of on-field work for a slate of virtual meetings. They took and passed a week’s worth of point-of-care tests, nervously waiting at NRG Stadium for a final set of results on Sunday morning after the rapid tests returned one false positive for a starter and three inconclusive results shortly before the deadline to declare inactive players.