Heading into the bye, the Vikings are hoping Aaron Jones’ hip injury is a short-term issue

The Vikings are hoping Aaron Jones’ hip injury isn’t serious, but they may not know until they do more testing. Jones left Sunday’s overseas win against the Jets in the second quarter and did not return.

It’s a problem with the right hip of Jones, who limped along the sideline with a frustrated look on his face. The 29-year-old also battled a hip injury in Week 2 against the 49ers, although he was able to play the following week against the Texans.

“He will be assessed,” said Kevin O’Connell after the win in London. “I’ll keep you updated on what that looks like, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that hopefully this will be short-lived.”

The 5-0 Vikings have a bye this week before the big NFC North showdown against the Lions at US Bank Stadium on Oct. 20. That gives Jones two weeks to try to get fit for this game.

It’s pretty clear how important Jones is to the Vikings’ offense. Through the first four weeks of the season, he was sixth in the NFL with 464 yards of offense. In London, he had 29 rushing yards and 24 yards receiving at the time of his departure. After Jones left the game, the Vikings really struggled to get anything going on offense. They became more one-dimensional and Sam Darnold had by far his worst game of the season (14 for 31, 179 yards, 0 TD, 1 INT).

Without Jones, the Vikings’ running backs were Ty Chandler and Myles Gaskin, who combined for just 32 yards on 16 carries in the game (14 of those runs came from Chandler). Fullback CJ Ham also had two carries, including the third rushing touchdown of his career. Speculatively, it’s possible that the Vikings exercised extra caution because Jones knew they had an off week coming up and didn’t want to take any chances with one of their best offensive players.

“I just know he felt it early on and tried to work through it,” O’Connell said of Ben Goessling. “When things started to take a turn, hopefully we avoided something worse by getting him out of there.”

More information on Jones is expected to be available this week. O’Connell’s next scheduled news conference is Tuesday.