GREEN BAY, Wis. — Julius Peppers welcomed the break.

Admittedly winded at the end of his age-defiant 49-yard interception return for a touchdown, the Green Bay Packers defensive end slammed on the brakes in the back of the south end zone at Lambeau Field. After a second or two to catch his breath, the linebacker was on the move again to jump into the nearby stands for his first Lambeau Leap at the behest of safety Morgan Burnett.

“He just said, ‘Go, go, go, go!'” Peppers recounted after the Packers’ 42-10 thrashing of the Minnesota Vikings on Thursday night. “That was my first time (to do the celebratory leap). Next time, I’ll be sure to get up there ASAP.”

The 34-year-old Peppers has plenty of time to recuperate from the biggest of many impactful plays initiated by a Green Bay defense that had its finest outing in a choppy season thus far.

The Packers’ second blowout victory in five days — they hammered the Chicago Bears 38-17 on the road Sunday — takes them into an extended hiatus with a sunny disposition at 3-2.

The players are off until Monday. They won’t be back on the field until Wednesday, in preparation for their next game, Oct. 12 at the Miami Dolphins.

“Man, it makes everything a lot better when you go into that (mini-bye week) winning,” linebacker A.J. Hawk said. “It will be good to rest up. We’ve had a lot of plays on defense these last three or four games. We’ve been out there a lot because we haven’t done a great job getting off the field.”

Instead of taking their lumps, especially being gashed as the league’s worst run defense after four games, the Packers took a month’s worth of frustration out on helpless Vikings quarterback Christian Ponder.

The former first-round draft pick, starting in place of injured rookie Teddy Bridgewater, could hardly stand up to the bevy of hard knocks leveled by a pressure-oriented defense. Green Bay had 16 hits on Ponder and sacked him six times. What’s more, back-to-back interceptions by Peppers and linebacker Jamari Lattimore in the second quarter helped stake the Packers to a 28-0 halftime lead.

The pick-six by Peppers — his first since he was playing for the Carolina Panthers in 2009 — was the talk of a giddy locker room late Thursday night. The 6-foot-7, 287-pound Peppers ran a good 80 yards on the runback after he started with the football just outside the numbers on the right side of the field and took it across to the numbers on the left side before darting straight to the end zone as he outran speedy running back Jerick McKinnon, among others.

“It was great,” said Burnett, who forced a fumble for a third Vikings turnover in the game. “Sometimes, you have to be careful because you just stop and just watch. He’s a great athlete, and then you’re sitting there looking like, ‘Man, that Julius Peppers is doing what he does.’ But then you turn around and, ‘Oh, I’ve got to go block somebody.’ It was fun, man. I was glad to be out there and be a part of it.”