Matthew Coller: Setting 2024 expectations for Kevin O'Connell isn't easy
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.
The 13-win season and culture should give O’Connell a strong foundation to work with as well as spearheading the McCarthy decision.
Any rational thinking regarding the Vikings coaching position would lead you to the conclusion that they would be best suited to allow HC to wade his way through a transition year in 2024 without too much concern for the final record and then give him time to develop McCarthy over the 2025 and 2026 seasons under the umbrella of a long-term contract extension. It makes more sense to treat 2024 as a pseudo debut season because the circumstances look more normal for a head coach taking over in Year 1 than they did back in 2022. If the Wilfs treated it that way, O’Connell would presumably get at least three years to see the vision for McCarthy come to fruition.
As far as owners go, few are more patient or rational than the Wilfs. When your ownership’s biggest fault is that they were probably too patient with the Zimmer regime and they sacrificed opportunities to tank because always want to be in the playoffs, well, it could be a heck of a lot worse.
But even the most rational folks — present party included — change tune when the team starts losing.
Which brings us to the expectations for 2024 when it comes to coaching. As much as you can easily talk yourself into Sam Darnold being a much better version than he has ever been before in his young career, the reality is that QBs with career winning percentages that look like Kirby Puckett’s batting average don’t always turn it around.
Ideally O’Connell will guide Darnold to a playoff season and lay the groundwork for McCarthy to take over and skyrocket the team to the moon like a Garoppolo-to-Purdy redux. But if the QB can’t be whispered from the bottom of everyone’s June QB rankings list into the top 15 then O’Connell is going to be in a difficult spot. Taking on the 49ers, Texans, Packers, Jets, Lions and Rams right out of the gate could be a recipe for pressure to mount for O’Connell to play McCarthy before he feels comfortable. And if McCarthy isn’t fully ready and things don’t go smoothy, then a season that we all figured to be pretty chill by NFL standards could suddenly seem quite tense going into 2025.
O’Connell’s ability to keep the train on the tracks gives him far more leeway than if he was a cantankerous coach but we saw with Leslie Frazier that if you don’t win it doesn’t matter how much love you got in the locker room or organization.
A rocky 2024 could set up for a contentious contract negotiation (again, if reporting of an initial four-year deal is correct) because O’Connell would want a long commitment and the Wilfs may want to hedge. We saw that during the 2020 Zimmer negotiation in which he didn’t sign until the beginning of training camp because he was unhappy with the length of the deal.
That’s the potential downside of a transition year between the competitive rebuild and the 2025 and 2026 seasons that we will view as the beginning of a seriously competitive window (if McCarthy works out). A six-win season will still feel dreadful and potentially undermine the overall belief in the head coach. Again, that’s not fair, that’s just football.
On the other side of the coin O’Connell has an opportunity to earn the belief of the ownership and fans alike with a good season in 2024. Should Darnold respond to his offensive scheme, moral support and the supporting cast that has been put together around him — now with major parts (Jones, Addison, Hockenson) having been acquired by the current regime — then the trust for this leadership would be through the roof.
So where is that bar? What does it need to look like in order for O’Connell and Co. to be considered one of the strongest staffs in the NFL?
(Related: It really helps that Brian Flores could be here for a long time).
The situation hasn’t lent itself to many other examples to lean upon but a swing season for belief in a head coach isn’t more than a stone’s throw away. Look at Dan Campbell’s 2022 season. The Lions started off slowly and then surged at the end of the year. Detroit’s victory that booted the Packers out of the playoffs made it clear that he was the guy to lead the Lions forward. Same goes for Matt LaFleur last year. You might have been able to argue that the Green Bay head coach was dragged along to success by his MVP quarterback but LaFleur galvanized the Packers and Jordan Love in the second half of 2023 en route to the divisional round.
Still it feels weird to look at a season in which the Vikings will (rightfully) start a career 21-35 quarterback as some type of proving ground.
The best answer is probably the most rational one. Let things play out over the next year without turning up the heat, then extend the head coach and then the real expectations kick in later. But football wouldn’t be football if everyone made calm, practical decisions.