The Vikings Team Captain and Rugged Veteran Who Should Earn an All Pro Spot
Brian O’Neill is one of the NFL’s foremost offensive linemen. Recognizing his excellence with an All Pro nod would be fitting.
The Vikings team captain is working through his seventh season in the NFL. Standing at 6’7″ and weighing 310 pounds, O’Neill is perfectly built to be an NFL tackle. He has great athleticism and offers the team rugged physicality from the right tackle spot. His leadership has proven to be invaluable and he’s Minnesota’s undisputed leader among the front five, especially with Christian Darrisaw sidelined.
Vikings Team Captain Brian O’Neill & The NFL’s All Pro Team
Start off with the team success.
The 13-2 Minnesota Vikings are moving into Week 17 with the chance of winning the NFC. The team is riding an eight-game win streak and tacking on two more would mean that the conference would need to move through U.S. Bank Stadium to get to the Super Bowl. Even better is that the Vikings would have an opening-round bye to nurse their bumps and bruises (the team’s normal bye occurred back in Week 6).
Brian O’Neill has been central to all of this success.
The Vikings offense has been thriving behind the excellent season from Sam Darnold. The offense is averaging 26.4 points per game, good for 9th in the NFL. O’Neill is a major reason why it all works.
A couple of weeks ago, O’Neill needed to miss a bit of game time due to a leg injury. Consider what Kevin O’Connell had to say. “Yeah, he was able to come back,” O’Connell explained, “got his knee evaluated there, and ended up getting taped up and came back in the game. We felt it a little bit. We’re already down one tackle. To have B.O. go in and get evaluated, we wanted to make sure he was OK to return, which he was.”
“Brian O’Neill once again just showing what he’s all about, going back in there and playing really good football,” O’Connell further elaborated.
PFF has been impressed with the work that Minnesota’s RT1 has been doing.
Per the analytics website, O’Neill is guilty of allowing 2 sacks, 0 QB hits, and 15 pressures. Keep in mind that those numbers are arriving alongside a quarterback who tends to hold onto the football for a while. Sam Darnold finds himself at 3rd in the NFL for his average time to throw — 3.08 seconds — meaning the line needs to protect for longer than most QBs (Next Gen Stats).
The overall PFF grade sits at 81.9, good for 11th among all tackles in the NFL.
Consider, as well, the word from ESPN’s pass block win rate. O’Neill is sitting in a tie for the top spot at 95%, but he’s doing so with considerably more plays than Trent Williams and Tristan Wirfs, the players who share the top spot.
One of the best decisions of Rick Spielman’s career was to draft Brian O’Neill at 62nd in the 2018 NFL Draft. Even better, Spielman constructed a lucrative extension to keep O’Neill around for a while: a five-year agreement that is committing $92.5 million in total compensation to the stud tackle. The deal was more than worth it.
Brian O’Neill, 29, has been to the Pro Bowl once. He has never been an All Pro, but that should change once the season reaches its end.
Editor’s Note: Information from Pro Football Reference, Over the Cap, and PFF helped with this piece.
K. Joudry is the Senior Editor for Vikings Territory and PurplePTSD. He has been covering the Vikings full time since the summer of 2021. He can be found on Twitter, as a co-host for Notes from the North, and as the proprietor at The Vikings Gazette, a humble Vikings Substack.
