New Vikings Defensive Coordinator Ed Donatell on Danielle Hunter, Scheme, 3-4 Fronts

Donatell brings over 30 years of NFL coaching experience to Minnesota, where he'll try to lead a defensive turnaround.

When Kevin O'Connell set out to look for a defensive coordinator to join his inaugural Minnesota Vikings coaching staff, the first-time head coach leaned on his past. With five years of experience as a quarterback in the NFL and seven years as an offensive coach, he's gone against all kinds of defenses.

None, according to O'Connell, were harder to play against than the ones Vic Fangio and Ed Donatell ran in San Francisco, Chicago, and Denver over the last 11 years.

"You really start thinking about it from the standpoint of, 'What do you not like to play against? What's the hardest defensive scheme to play against? What keeps you up at night as you game plan as an offense?'" O'Connell said. "Guys like Ed Donatell. He's been doing it for a long time in this league. One of the best secondary coaches that we have in our league. I think he's been in a role for a few years now, in a leadership role that shows me he's primed to take over our vision of how we want to play defense here with the Vikings. It was a no brainer to me to reach out to Ed at the beginning of this process, and just throughout getting to know him and getting a feel for where he's at in his career, he's the perfect guy for me because he shares the mantra of wanting to lead, teach and motivate."

Donatell was introduced to local media at TCO Performance Center on Thursday afternoon, along with new Vikings offensive coordinator Wes Phillips and special teams coordinator Matt Daniels. Phillips said some very interesting things and Daniels brought a youthful exuberance that was palpable, but Donatell stole the show with his passion for talking about defensive schemes and the opportunity he has in front of him in Minnesota.

The 65-year-old is the elder statesman of this coaching staff. He's ten years older than assistant head coach Mike Pettine, the second-oldest member of O'Connell's staff. Donatell got his first coaching job as a graduate assistant at Kent State University in 1979, broke into the NFL as the Jets' defensive backs coach in 1990, and has been going strong ever since. He's been a DBs coach for four different teams and this will be his fourth stint as a defensive coordinator. Players, schemes, coaches — Donatell has seen it all. He's coached Hall of Famers and won Super Bowls.

He's got so much experience, but the reason Donatell has lasted as long as he has is that he loves to adapt with the game. Part of what appealed to him about this opportunity was getting to work with two young, forward-thinking leaders in O'Connell and GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, neither of whom was alive when he first started coaching.

"In early talks with Kevin and also with Kwesi, it was really easy for me to feel how connected they were and how aligned they were," Donatell said. "This was a vision of growth, of collaboration, of growing new people, growing leaders. And I wanted to be part of that. And I see myself as a team-builder and to jump on with somebody who's young and progressive and on the top, cutting-edge of things, was really attractive to me.

"That's the way I stay young, I have to be around young, open, progressive, new ideas. I welcome the science of the NFL. We use this term analytics — we need both [analytics and traditional coaching/scouting] to make it work."

In his early days as a defensive coordinator with the Packers and Falcons from 2000 to 2006, Donatell coached a 4-3 scheme. But over the past 11 years with Fangio, he's been a 3-4 guy. In Minnesota, with Donatell separated from Fangio for the first time in a dozen years, he's going to do a little bit of both. It'll be a 3-4 defense that also uses four-man fronts, especially because the base defense in the modern NFL is nickel personnel with five defensive backs.

"It's going to be a multiple, dictating 3-4 and 4-3 setup," Donatell said. "Just know we'll have both fronts. That will make us hard to play against. Everything else we'll do will be engineered to make it hard for the quarterback. That's physically and mentally. Keystone foundation points: we're going to set edges. That's our outside linebackers, defensive ends, we're going to set hard edges. We're going to be a great tackling outfit. You look at our history as coaches, takeaways are a foundation point."

Donatell didn't want to mention players on the Vikings' roster by name, due to the nature of contract situations and not wanting to leave anyone out, but he was asked specifically about one player: Danielle Hunter. There's been plenty of speculation about the future of Hunter, who remains arguably Minnesota's best defensive player but has missed most of the last two seasons due to separate upper-body injuries. Will he fit in a 3-4 defense? Hunter is still 27 years old and can be kept around with a simple restructure that reduces his 2022 cap hit.

According to Donatell, Hunter can play both outside linebacker and defensive end.

"The downs we'll be playing in this league because of the multiple receivers, we're going to be in a lot of nickel," he said. "And in the nickel, we'll play in an even front and an odd front. So that won't be much changed. There will be a lot of carryover to our guys."

As for the rest of the personnel, Donatell said he and his staff — Pettine, Mike Smith, Chris Rumph, Daronte Jones — are diving into learning the roster, learning its strengths and weaknesses, and going from there.

Schematically, Donatell knows what he wants. The three layers of the defense have to work together to create overlap and make things difficult for the quarterback.

"We're going to hit blocks thick," he said. "We have big, strong bodies inside, and then we're going to get off blocks. So you might be playing your gap and a half. That relates to the linebackers. They're going to be stacking a gap, falling back, so we get overlap. This thing is about overlap. Then there's the next level, our [defensive backs] will be coming down from a shell alignment. And they're that third level of overlap, a safety or a corner. We want to have overlap so we can make it harder for the quarterback to see what's really going on when they snap the ball."

Beyond the scheme stuff, though, Donatell talked about culture and collaboration in a way that meshed with what we've heard from Adofo-Mensah and O'Connell in recent weeks. He talked about getting input from players, building a fun environment where everyone is excited to come to work, and nurturing a culture that gets the most out of people.

If the Vikings can combine that side of things with a system that helps their players thrive, they'll have a chance to make major strides on the defensive side of the ball. There are question marks on the roster at all three levels of the defense, and Donatell will work with O'Connell and Adofo-Mensah on those decisions. But there's also plenty of talent in place, with Hunter, Dalvin Tomlinson, Eric Kendricks, Harrison Smith, and some intriguing young pieces.

The 2020 Broncos ranked 25th in the NFL in scoring defense. The 2021 Broncos finished third. Donatell's new task is to lead another turnaround in Minnesota, this time with a Vikings defense that finished 29th in 2020 and 24th last season in points allowed.

"We're confident that we can, but we’re on a journey that just started, and it’s going to be different than the last journey," Donatell said. "But when you’ve done it a few times, I’m confident in that. There will be setbacks along the way, and we may have to tweak things, but we’re very confident, and our path shows that we’ve been able to do that. Now, we’ve got to prove it, and that’s the fun, right?"

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