No time to waste: Vikings looking for playoff success under Kevin O'Connell
The Vikings coach has a .667 winning percentage in the regular season and has gotten his team into the postseason in two of his first three years. But he has yet to record a playoff victory.
Kevin O’Connell’s three-year tenure as the Vikings’ coach has been filled with success — in the regular season. The Vikings went 13-4 and won the NFC North in 2022, slumped to 7-10 in 2023 — in part because of a season-ending Achilles’ injury suffered by quarterback Kirk Cousins in Week 8 — and then bounced back to go 14-3 and claim a wild card spot last season.
That’s the (mostly) good news.
What O’Connell has yet to do is win a playoff game. The Vikings lost to the New York Giants by a touchdown in a wild card game at U.S. Bank Stadium in O’Connell’s first season and then were handed an 18-point defeat by the Los Angeles Rams last January.
O’Connell signed a reported four-year contract extension following last season. It was a reward for his 34-17 regular-season record but came with the expectation that postseason success is right around the corner. The Vikings haven’t won a playoff game since their wild card victory at New Orleans during the 2019 season. That came under Mike Zimmer, whom O’Connell replaced as coach.
Justin Jefferson, one of the NFL’s best wide receivers, has zero playoff wins to his name in five seasons with the Vikings. The franchise spent nearly $300 million in free agency this offseason — much of it to upgrade the interior offensive and defensive lines — in an attempt to end the drought when it comes to playoff wins.
“That’s the tough thing to think about,” Jefferson said when asked about the current roster and playoff expectations. “Just because you have 17 games before you even reach that point. It’s really just taking one week at a time, just focusing on ourselves, focus on things that we can better ourselves with every single day. Our motto is getting 1 percent better every single day. … We haven’t really had success in the past with playoff runs, especially since KO has been here. … Since I’ve been here. It’s definitely something that’s thought of, but we’ve got to take it a week at a time. When it does get there, of course, we need to show it.”
What’s interesting is the disparity between what the Vikings and their fans think they are capable of doing and what the national pundits think. There are many examples of this, including ESPN’s analytically driven Football Power Index.
The FPI has the Vikings with a win-loss projection of 8.6-8.4. That lands Minnesota in the 15th spot in the 32-team league and behind NFC North rivals Detroit (9.6-7.3) and Green Bay (8.9-8.0). The Chicago Bears are just behind the Vikings at 8.4-8.6.
So why aren’t the Vikings getting more credit for their busy offseason? Because quarterback J.J. McCarthy has never started an NFL game and is coming off a rookie season that he missed after undergoing meniscus surgery. Nothing scares the experts like the unknown.
The Lions have Jared Goff at quarterback. The Packers have Jordan Love. There isn’t nearly as much guesswork about those two as there is about McCarthy.
O’Connell has become known for the work he has done in helping quarterbacks. That started with Cousins and includes the dramatic turnaround last season by former first-round flop Sam Darnold. Vikings owners Zygi and Mark Wilf are confident that O’Connell can have the same type of impact on McCarthy, who was taken with the 10th pick in the first round of the 2024 draft.
The Vikings spent the offseason making sure McCarthy is surrounded by everything he needs to have success in his first year as the starter.