The Vikings had just bowed out of the NFC divisional playoffs in January 2020 when Adam Thielen sat down with longtime personal trainer Ryan Englebert for their annual planning session. The item atop both of their lists: How to keep injuries such as the hamstring strain that bothered the receiver through much of 2019 from becoming a regular occurrence.
Thielen first injured his hamstring on a touchdown pass from Kirk Cousins in a Week 7 win against the Lions, and would miss nearly two months after a pair of setbacks that prolonged his absence. He tried to return from the injury two weeks later against the Chiefs, but played only seven snaps before aggravating his leg, and would miss another four games, with his return date postponed by two weeks after another setback in a December outdoor practice.
"I kind of stepped back and just addressed my nutrition, strength training, performance, all that," Thielen said. "Just kind of looked at it from an outside perspective and tried to figure out what I could do better, what I was doing well from a recovery standpoint."
In a way, Thielen's consternation over the injury did something else for the receiver as he approached his 30th birthday: It gave him a head start on some of the questions he'd have to answer in order to remain productive into the latter stage of his career. He shifted to a high-protein diet to aid in muscle recovery and took a firmer line on his diet, cutting out some of the unhealthy choices he'd find himself tempted by after a long day of training.
At least based on his durability during the 2020 season, Thielen said he believes the changes he made worked. He played 985 snaps last season, only 47 short of his career high even though he missed a game while in the NFL's COVID-19 protocol. Three days after the season ended, he said, he was ready to start working out again.
"There's a lot of factors that led into this, but after the season last year was the best I've ever felt in my entire life," Thielen said last month, in an appearance for Gone Rogue All-Natural Turkey Bites, the high-protein snack he's added to his regimen. "Mentally, physically, I just felt really good. I'm just trying to keep that going this year. There's things that we adjusted, things that we wanted to work on, but for the most part, we just made sure we were doing the things that helped me get to that point."
More than eight years after the Vikings brought him in on a rookie camp tryout, Thielen is the second longest-tenured player on the team, behind only safety Harrison Smith. He will turn 31 later this month, and after a 14-touchdown season last year, he needs only eight scores to have more receiving TDs in his 30s than any wideout in Vikings history other than Cris Carter.
The Vikings converted $10 million of his base salary to a signing bonus in a cap-savings move this spring, pushing $7.5 million of cap costs into the final three years of his deal. They would save $5.845 million by cutting Thielen after the season, but would incur $11.1 million of dead money charges, in addition to whatever goodwill they'd lose by parting with the popular Detroit Lakes, Minn., native.
