MINNEAPOLIS -- The last time the Minnesota Vikings won coming out of their bye week was in 2009, the year referenced in so many of these statistics about the last time the Vikings enjoyed a particular kind of consistent success. Since then, there's been a game delayed by lightning and distracted by the twin sideshows of Randy Moss' return and Brett Favre's sexting debacle.

There's been a Monday Night Football blowout in Green Bay, Adrian Peterson missing a team bus in Chicago, a post-London thumping that effectively put Leslie Frazier on notice and a malfunctioning clock at Soldier Field that led Teddy Bridgewater to think he only had time to heave one pass into the end zone (when there were really 42 seconds left).

In light of all that, it's little wonder why coach Mike Zimmer has followed such a meticulous bye week schedule, keeping players in town to practice until Tuesday and bringing them back from their respite on Monday for a walk-through. The Vikings, who are 5-1 in their last six games before the bye, haven't been very good coming out of it.

"It’s not just a bye week," Zimmer said. "It’s when guys have three or four days off, trying to get back into it mentally. For a while, a year ago, we’d give them a long weekend or something like that. They’d come back and they weren’t as crisp or sharp as when they left. That’s the pitfalls of it."

The Vikings had several players stay in Minnesota during the bye week to rehab or work out before taking the weekend off, and Zimmer said the team "picked it up pretty good" after an "average" start to Monday's practice. The Vikings head into Sunday's game against the Kansas City Chiefs as 3 1/2-point favorites, and will face a team that just lost running back Jamaal Charles to a torn ACL.

Will that be enough to pull the Vikings out of their post-bye doldrums? After what's happened in the past, Zimmer isn't assuming anything.

Asked if he was concerned with the Vikings relaxing too much against a 1-4 team, Zimmer said, "We’ve only won two games, so no, not at all. Our focus is on us and what we do and how we need to win and how we need to play and how we need to get better, how we need to perform in the crucial situations of the game. Really that’s all I’m concerned about.

"Every day I come in here and try to figure out how we can be better. Obviously you game plan for people and things like that, but this league is so good. There are so many great players, there are so many teams that you don’t expect to win that win each and every day. The teams that end up with good records usually find ways to win and that’s all we’re trying to do is continue to find ways to win."