Minnesota Vikings' Pro Bowl tight end Kyle Rudolph is penning a weekly blog during the 2017 NFL season. In his latest offering, he talks about the team's defeat to Pittsburgh Steelers in Week Two and how they're already looking ahead to their October trip to London...
The flight home after a loss is never fun, especially when you feel like you beat yourselves.
That's how it felt after our 26-9 reverse to the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday. We beat ourselves by giving away too many penalties, both on offence and defence.
Pittsburgh are obviously a good team, and tough to beat at Heinz Field - I think they have won something like seven out of their last eight home openers - but we made it even harder.
We felt like we had a good plan from an offensive standpoint, but we weren't able to really execute it because we kept getting ourselves into First and 20s, Second and 20 situations - we faced Third and 11 plus at least 10 times.
When you're in situations like that, it makes it really hard to get anything going on offence and unfortunately we weren't able to extend any drives and put points on the board because of it.
Obviously it hurt us finding out that our starting quarterback Sam Bradford was not playing due to a knee injury. But, we had all the confidence in the world that we'd go out there and win with Case Keenum.
It was a disheartening loss but, in the NFL, we have that 24-hour rule where we come back on a Monday ready to work, whether that is after a big win, or a tough loss - watch the tape, learn from it and then move on.
Just like the opening week Monday night win over the New Orleans Saints only counts as one win, this only counts as one loss. We've got 14 more games, so we have to move on and take things week by week.
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are next up on Sunday. It's a huge game for us! Tampa have aspirations to be in the play-offs - a team we'll be battling with come late December for a spot.
We're coming home, playing in front of our fans - we think we have the best atmosphere in football - so we need to feed off that and get some wins with the home games we've got coming up. We have just one road trip to Chicago in between now and our game in London on October 29.
It feels right around the corner, especially as the first game London game of the season is this Sunday, between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Baltimore Ravens. The guys were all getting excited about it this week as we were talking through our schedule in the coming weeks.
Having already had the experience of playing over there and spent some time there before, I know how passionate the British fans are about the NFL. Wembley was incredible, but I'm excited to play at Twickenham this time, another great stadium that you guys have and I'm sure the atmosphere and environment will be amazing once again.
But first, we've got to take care of business this weekend. We had a short week last week after the Monday night game, so this is our first Sunday to Sunday schedule.
I got back quite late from Pittsburgh, so my twin girls Andersyn and Finley were already in bed. But on Monday morning, it was time to get up when they got up - I've got to be dad. They don't care that I lost to the Steelers. Monday and Tuesday were both recovery days from the game, just about getting yourself rested ready for practice on Wednesday.
There is still some uncertainty at the quarterback position ahead of this Sunday as to whether Sam or Case will be starting. But you just want to make sure that you're as prepared as possible from a game plan standpoint.
Myself and the other skill players try to treat it as if there's just that little bit more importance put on us on game day - you want to make sure you're as crisp as possible, by the book and where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there.
When you play your best, prepare hard and do everything you can to win then you can have no complaints if you get beaten by the better team on the day. What we've got to make sure is that we don't beat ourselves.
Week Three continues on Sunday with Jacksonville Jaguars versus Baltimore Ravens at Wembley, live on Sky Sports Action from 1.30pm. RedZone is back on Sky Sports Mix - all the action gets underway from 5.30pm.
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