Breaking News: Minnesota Vikings Coach Kevin O’Connell was fired earlier today after Confronting the…
Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell revealed he tried to get out of dancing at his own wedding in 2010 with the legal language in his contract when he was a player.
O’Connell made the revelation to ESPN for a story about what players are prohibited from doing in the offseason. He was a quarterback for the New York Jets in 2010 when
If the reporting on Kevin O’Connell’s contract is correct then he would be in line for an extension prior to the 2025 season, assuming history follows with the way Vikings owners have dealt with extensions in the past.
Normally the season before the extension would be considered a prove-it type year for a coach that has made the playoffs once, missed once and doesn’t have a postseason win to his name. But normally a head coach entering his third year hasn’t just drafted the future franchise quarterback — and if he did then normally we would be expecting to see that QB right away.
Nothing about the Vikings’ path with O’Connell has been standard. Oftentimes a new head coach takes over a team that is in peril, not one that believed it was a culture change away from being a serious contender. When a new coach has an instant impact and the club wins 13 games out of the gate then we usually don’t see management strip the roster of Pro Bowlers at running back, wide receiver, defensive tackle, linebacker and cornerback.
How is 2023 supposed to be factored in the overall evaluation? While Mark Wilf said at the owner’s meetings that going 7-10 was unacceptable, the Vikings were 17-8 under O’Connell when Kirk Cousins went down. The head coach was saddled with a 2-9 career journeyman QB who had to learn the offense on the fly and another journeyman with a penchant for tossing the pigskin to the other team. In the Vikings’ six losses with Josh Dobbs or Nick Mullens starting, they only lost by more than 10 points on one occasion and losses to the Broncos, Bears, Bengals and Lions (Week 16) all came in the final moments.
Despite the 7-10 record the NFL Players Association’s anonymous survey ranked the Vikings as the No. 2 organization and O’Connell was the highest graded head coach. For a franchise that desperately wanted to fix its culture following the toxic end to Mike Zimmer’s era, the NFLPA survey has to be heavily factored. The front door to the franchise has created a place where players want to be. They landed two major Day 1 free agent signings in Jonathan Greenard and Andrew Van Ginkel and JJ McCarthy told everyone who would listen that he wanted to be in Minnesota more than landing with any other team.
