Kevin O’Connell Offers Up a Facepalm Moment
Kevin O’Connell has many strengths. Being patient with the ground game isn’t one of them. Not so far, at least.
Last season, a 22-year-old J.J. McCarthy was tasked with starting in the NFL for the first time in his life. Worse yet, he had to do so while adjusting his mechanics on the fly and from behind a patchwork offensive line. Coach O’Connell didn’t do a good enough job of running the ball, something that did get rectified by the end of the year. He recently reflected on the strategic validity of grinding out wins via the ground attack and playing strong defense.
Kevin O’Connell On Running & Defense Being a Winning Strategy
Lo and behold, there’s some merit in the Mike Zimmer approach.
Minnesota’s former head coach wasn’t without flaw, but he generally was a tremendous defensive playcaller. So, too, did he do a nice job of prioritizing the ground game. Most notably, Dalvin Cook was a sensational runner in some of those Zimmer days, but Adrian Peterson, Latavius Murray, Jerick McKinnon, and Alexander Mattison were among the RBs to get worked into the mix for Coach Zimmer.
So far, Kevin O’Connell has been more reluctant to lean into the old school approach, but he has recently talked about grinding out victories.
“We were able to apply some things to our overall toolbox of how we’re going to win games,” O’Connell said to Mike Florio and Chris Simms in late March. He goes on: “Maybe I don’t get invited to the smart guy table by playing a certain kind of style where we ran the football, we were not going to turn it over, and we’re going to play great defense. And we won five games in a row.”
The sound you’re hearing is Vikings followers across the Midwest collectively participating in a facepalm.
“So what I told our team at the end of the year is,” O’Connell went on to say, “let’s not forget the fact that we just learned maybe some new ways to win.” Speaking prophetically, O’Connell then said that “maybe we’ll need to really call upon that […] late in December in a bad weather game” before saying that “those types of games still win.”
Handing over the headline of this piece to The Onion may lead to a title that states, “Kevin O’Connell Learns that Defense Matters (Running, Too).” But, in all seriousness, there’s at least some merit in the idea that Coach O’Connell has discovered a more balanced approach.
Last season, the Vikings finished 23rd in the NFL by running for 1,841 yards. That’s despite a healthy 4.5 yards-per-carry average that sat in a tie for 10th in the NFL. Put simply, the Vikings did well when running the ball but Kevin O’Connell didn’t run very much. Minnesota’s 410 attempts came in at 27th in the NFL, better than only five teams.
The Vikings appear ready to start leaning on heavier personnel in 2026. Doing so means being a touch more unpredictable before the snap and a touch more muscular after the snap. Ideally, whoever the starting quarterback is will have the benefit of being able to hand off the ball. Doing so will mean not needing to carry the weight of the world.
Kevin O’Connell is orchestrating an offense that boasts Aaron Jones as the RB1/2, Jordan Mason as the RB1/2, and Zavier Scott as the RB3. Very good chance, folks, that a new runner gets added in the 2026 NFL Draft.
Like a Ferrari in a garage, the RBs need the key to be put in the ignition and then be allowed to get onto the road to chew up ground mileage. Kevin O’Connell has commonly been found talking about running in March, April, and for the remainder of the offseason before September brings the reality of passing back to the fore.
If that occurs yet again, then the facepalms will continue as the Vikings face plant due to an over reliance on passing the pigskin.
