'I could beat Travis Kelce in an actual sack race - I'm pretty confident in my hopping abilities!'
Sunday 12 November 2017 11:19, UK
Minnesota Vikings' tight end Kyle Rudolph is penning a weekly blog during the 2017 NFL season. In his latest offering, he talks bye weeks, birthdays and Bugs Bunny, as well as challenging Travis Kelce to a sack race...
Our trip to Twickenham was awesome!
The most important thing was obviously coming out of the game with a win, but the experience itself was great too.
The atmosphere was amazing - a little different to Wembley, playing on a rugby pitch rather than a soccer pitch, while the fans were also a little more on top of you. And, although it was officially a Cleveland Browns home game, we felt we had a good majority of the crowd there - we know the Vikings have a ton of fans over in the UK.
Sadly we didn't get to spend as long in London as we did last time, but we've since had some time off during our bye week following the game, which has been really nice.
It's good to get away from football for a little while, recover and hit the reset button a little bit. It was the perfect time for a break too as, not only was it Halloween, but it was my 28th birthday this week.
We held the team Halloween party right after getting back from London. Personally, we went for a bit of a Space Jam theme! My wife and I went as Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny, while my team-mate Michael Floyd was Michael Jordan. It was a really fun night, and nice that we could enjoy ourselves that little bit more without work the next day.
As for my birthday, we went out for a lovely meal to celebrate, while my wife got me a great gift - a trip to New York to play two rounds of golf. One at Liberty National and the other at Baltusrol, two very nice PGA courses.
I'm really looking forward to that, though I'll need to brush up my game a bit before going. I'm nowhere near a scratch golfer - the only scratch I come close to are the ones that mark my ball when I inevitably hit it out of bounds.
During the bye week, I also disappeared to South Dakota with friends for a couple of days, and went to watch my college alma mater, Notre Dame, take on Wake Forest. They won, 48-37 - it was a great game, and they're now looking good at 8-1 for the season, currently ranked third.
I kept tabs on the NFL a little too. A guy I really like watching is Travis Kelce at the Kansas City Chiefs.
They do a great job in the way that they use him, getting Travis doing a lot of things that conventionally tight ends don't.
I don't think they had a say in his potato sack race celebration though. That was all Travis. Compared to my duck, duck, goose effort from a few weeks back, I'd say it was up there on the creativity scale - it was well executed and the guys looked like they were having fun.
While he might have me beat on the celebration, I could beat Travis in an actual sack race - I'm pretty confident in my hopping abilities!
The break is over now and it's now time to get back to work, back to football, and really push over these next eight games to get into the playoffs.
The whole team have jumped right back into things, had a great week of preparation and we're now ready to go play the Washington Redskins.
They're coming into the game off the back of a really good road win over the Seahawks in Seattle, so they'll be fired up after that, playing in front of a home crowd.
It will be tough for us. But we've won four straight coming into this game, and I'm confident in our team - rested and recovered after a bye - to go out there and get a win.
In beating the Browns in London, we didn't quite execute as well as we would have liked to early on, turning the ball over on our first drive, letting them score and get into a lead. But we never gave in and never let the game get away from us.
We settled down at half-time and were much better in the second half. Hopefully we can take that with us into this weekend in Washington.
