Kevin O'Connell doesn't get a pass for Vikings' collapse when it mattered most
The Vikings coach guided his team to 14 victories this season, but Sam Darnold's flop in the final two games, and his team not looking prepared in Monday's playoff loss, can't be ignored.
Kevin O’Connell is likely to be named NFL coach of the year for the work he did this season. He led a team that many expected to be an NFC also-ran to 14 wins and helped turn Sam Darnold from an NFL punch line into an MVP candidate.
O’Connell is worthy of all the praise he gets for this. He also deserves any criticism he receives for how badly Darnold and his team played in its final two games of the season. A 31-9 loss in Week 18 at Detroit cost the Vikings the top seed in the NFC but didn’t put an end to their season.
The end came Monday night in the Vikings’ feeble 27-9 opening round playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams. The lasting image of the defeat will be Darnold looking lost all evening and the Vikings appearing unprepared for their most important game of the season.
The easy thing would be to focus on Darnold’s second consecutive horrific performance — one that likely will cost him millions in free agency, and cause many to assume he’s back to being the same guy who flopped as the third-overall pick in the 2018 draft — but O’Connell doesn’t get a pass.
Not after he received so much credit for the work he did with Darnold, only to end up overseeing eight quarters of a football horror show. When it happened in Detroit, many believed (including me) that O’Connell would get Darnold back on track, just as he had done after Darnold threw three picks in Week 10 in Jacksonville.
But Darnold showed zero improvement on Monday and looked nothing like the guy who shocked the NFL by throwing for 4,319 yards with 35 touchdowns, 12 interceptions and a 102.5 passer rating in the regular season. Darnold’s performance on Monday was reminiscent of the guy who was heard saying, “I’m seeing ghosts,” when the New York Jets were down 24-0 to New England in a Monday night game in October 2019.
O’Connell, the Vikings’ offensive play caller, seemed to have the right words for Darnold all season as he communicated with the quarterback to send in plays and offer encouragement. But the play calls and encouragement did nothing on Monday.
Darnold was sacked nine times, tying an NFL playoff record. Many of those Rams sacks, including one that ended up in a fumble and touchdown, were because Darnold couldn’t, or wouldn’t, get rid of the ball. O’Connell had no clue how to fix his broken quarterback and, with the Vikings trailing by 18 points in the fourth quarter, the coach settled for a nonchalant approach that was akin to waving the white flag toward his former boss, Rams coach Sean McVay.
This was the second time in O’Connell’s three seasons that he has led the Vikings to double-digit victories — O’Connell won 13 games in his first season in 2022 — but both of his playoff appearances have ended in first-round defeats. The first was a 31-24 loss to the New York Giants in which quarterback Kirk Cousins threw a 3-yard check down on fourth-and-8 from near midfield with 1 minute, 51 seconds remaining.
That was disappointing. What happened Monday was embarrassing. The Rams sandwiched a 70-yard, seven-play touchdown drive and 62-yard, eight-play field goal drive around a three-and-out by the Vikings on which they lost 11 yards on the first two plays. The tone was set for the entire night.