EAGAN, Minn. — Aaron Jones was prepared for the worst. The Minnesota Vikings running back had just dropped a pitch from quarterback Sam Darnold, resulting in a lost fumble and the kind of jog to the sideline that football players dread.
Coach Kevin O’Connell was waiting. It was the Vikings’ fifth first-quarter turnover in 10 games, the most in the NFL at the time, and the issue had been addressed repeatedly in team meetings.
What Jones encountered, however, was O’Connell’s secret sauce. He was “stern” but not angry, Jones recalled.
“He just wanted to know what happened,” Jones said. “He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t cuss. He didn’t make you tuck your tail. We explained it, and he said to us, ‘It’s OK, guys. We’re good. You’re both pros. I know you’ll get it fixed, so let’s let it go.'”
Both Jones and Darnold rebounded that day to help the Vikings to a 23-13 victory over the Tennessee Titans, one of their 14 wins in O’Connell’s wildly successful third season in Minnesota. They had profited from a coaching style — a combination of empathy and confidence-boosting, well-suited for today’s NFL — that has come to define their coach beyond his reputation as a quarterback whisperer.
Utilizing an approach he admits is a product of his own failed playing career as an NFL quarterback, O’Connell has the Vikings positioned as the NFC’s No. 5 seed, beginning Monday night at the Los Angeles Rams (8 p.m. ET, ESPN/ABC). He is the betting favorite to win Coach of the Year, and the Vikings are likely to offer him a major contract extension after the season.
“Coaching, in my opinion, is about what you do in those moments to help make sure that your team improves and players improve,” O’Connell, 39, told ESPN. “And then doing it in a way that never ever alters their confidence to go get their job done.
“If we’re only going to operate the way we want when things are going well, that’s a culture that has nothing to do with what we’re trying to build here. And luckily, because I think we have great players and we have great people in our locker room and our coaching staff, people have adhered to that being our way of doing things, and it has shown up.”
O’Connell set the tone in 2022 during his first training camp when he stunned players by refusing to apply some of the traditional tools of football coaching. Former receiver Adam Thielen said he was left wondering: “Is he not going to rip us?”
Since then, at least one player — defensive tackle Harrison Phillips — has encouraged him to use harsher tactics during team meetings, Phillips told ESPN.
But O’Connell has largely maintained his approach, to great success, while dismissing insinuations it’s soft or too sensitive.
He is the fifth coach in NFL history to achieve multiple 13-win seasons in a three-year span, and his 26-9 career record in one-score games ranks second in league history (minimum 25 games). His work to elevate quarterbacks, from Darnold to Kirk Cousins to Josh Dobbs, is among the most highly sought attributes for NFL coaches, but people inside and outside the Vikings organization ascribe his success to a much broader skill set.
“He’s not just a quarterback guy,” said former Los Angeles Chargers coach Brandon Staley, who coached with O’Connell when both were with the Rams and has spent this season with the San Francisco 49ers.
“He’s not just an offensive coach. He’s a complete coach. He has the innovation and the football mind, and that’s important. But there are a lot of good football coaches who can draw and design really good plays. But when you’re a head coach, you have to be able to connect with people, and he’s got that capacity.”
O’CONNELL DISPLAYED THOSE tools in Week 9 when he consoled Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson after a 21-13 Vikings victory. Richardson, the No. 4 pick of the 2023 draft, didn’t play because he had been benched the previous week. In a scene captured by NFL Films, O’Connell told Richardson: “You’re a bad dude and you’re going to play a long time in this league.” He added: “I still believe in you. I know these guys do, too.”
Two weeks later, Richardson was back in the Colts’ starting lineup. “For him to give me those words,” he told ESPN, “it was just another boost that I needed for myself just to let me know, ‘OK, everything’s going to work out the way it should,’ and I just got to keep working. Whenever you’ve got other people believing in you, that means you’re doing something right.”
“You’re gonna play a long time in this league.”
Awesome to see Kevin O’Connell encouraging Anthony Richardson 🙏pic.twitter.com/P41jbYzglZ
— NFL Films (@NFLFilms) November 7, 2024
O’Connell downplayed the interaction, saying: “I’m just a big fan, and if you have something to say to uplift somebody else, you might as well say it and not keep it to yourself.”
His former boss with the Rams, coach Sean McVay, saw it differently.
“That’s what makes him special,” McVay said. “He has a heart for people. He has such incredible, authentic emotional intelligence. … That’s why his team loves him. That was a cool, authentic moment that is truly a good insight into what makes Kevin a special person above everything.”
A few weeks later, O’Connell approached Chicago Bears rookie quarterback Caleb Williams after the Vikings’ 30-27 overtime win at Soldier Field. According to Williams, O’Connell told him he would be tough to compete going forward in the NFC North and to keep pushing through a difficult season. “You hear those encouraging words,” Williams said, “and they’re important.”
Vikings players recognized the tone and sentiment as well.
“I was hearing that some people thought he was doing that for the cameras,” linebacker Jonathan Greenard said. “It’s not fake at all. I guarantee you that what he said in those conversations was no bulls— at all. He literally talks to you straight up.
“He’s been there before himself. I’m pretty sure he dealt with a lot of adversity in his career. So that’s why it means a lot to a lot of players and a lot of people. You never know what people are going through in their lives, in their careers. For him to take a step back from coaching, going to the opposing side and saying that, it just shows what type of person he is.”
Similar stories abound from the Vikings’ locker room. Greenard recalled calling O’Connell to tell him his daughter was ill and on her way to urgent care. Greenard, who signed with the Vikings as a free agent in March after four years with the Houston Texans, said he was worried about missing practice.
“Practice never came up one time,” he said. “Some coaches are football first, but he’s like, ‘No, let’s make sure we get her taken care of. I know you’ll take care of your business and be ready for this game.’ Just knowing that in the back of my mind, it gave me peace, and it makes you want to play even harder for the guy.”
O’Connell has grown particularly fond of running back Cam Akers, whom the Vikings acquired in 2023 after he ran afoul of the Rams’ coaching staff. O’Connell developed an admiration for Akers when he played in Super Bowl LVI 5½ months after suffering a torn Achilles tendon in 2021. This season, he corrected a reporter who asked what he liked about Akers.
“Love,” O’Connell said. “It’s OK to use that word every now and then, man.”
Said Akers: “It’s a blessing to be able to have a coach like him, a personable coach like him, and I’m going to try to run through a wall for him every chance I get.”
One of O’Connell’s operating philosophies is encouraging players to be “the best versions of themselves.” Veteran cornerback Shaq Griffin, who, like Greenard, signed with the Vikings this spring, said his first meeting with O’Connell reminded him of the way former Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll talked to players.
“The vibe he goes with is that he wants us to show our personalities and be exactly who we are,” Griffin said. “That makes it easy to come play hard for a guy like that. He’s not asking us to be something we’re not. It reminds me of Pete, and I think you can name on one hand how many coaches are like Pete Carroll.”
IS THAT TRUE for all players? Have generations of football coaches unnecessarily yelled, knocked over training tables and expressed faux (or real) anger? Don’t football players at least occasionally need motivation that matches the intensity of the physical game?
Griffin acknowledged O’Connell’s approach works best for veteran teams that have learned to get themselves prepared for the weekly fight. At the end of the regular season, the Vikings ranked as the NFL’s oldest team by snap-weighted age, with 19 of their 22 starters having at least four years of NFL experience.
“Young guys need structure, and I get that,” Griffin said. “They’re going to have to have coaches yell at them to know you really care about them getting better. Older teams have the guys that can handle it and do well with a coach like Pete Carroll or [O’Connell].
“You don’t need to remind them that they need to get treatment, or they need to be on time, or that it’s time to get serious because we’ve got a game. If they hadn’t learned to do that, they probably wouldn’t have made it this long in the league.”
The excitement of O’Connell’s 13-4 opening season in 2022 faded a bit after a 7-11 campaign in 2023 that was marred by receiver Justin Jefferson’s torn right hamstring and quarterback Kirk Cousins’ torn right Achilles. With a chance to qualify for a wild-card playoff spot, the Vikings lost the final four games of the season.
Afterward, O’Connell set up offseason conversations with key veterans. Phillips, the defensive tackle who had signed as a free agent in 2022, said he had experienced a similar initial encounter with O’Connell as Griffin and it was “so powerful to me.” But there are limits, Phillips said, to the unrequited love a coach can express.
“These last couple seasons, it was too comforting and he created too healing and helping of an environment,” Phillips said. “People could take advantage of that in the wrong way. Young players, guys could go, ‘Woe is me’ and lean into some of that pity almost.
“And so I actually told him this offseason that Day 1 of OTAs, if I mess up, put it on the big screen and call me out in front of everybody, just so people can see that we do have a standard.”
O’Connell didn’t go that far, Phillips said. At least part of the reason was because he had achieved so much by giving key players praise in front of teammates — particularly in his elevation of Cousins.
What O’Connell did do, Phillips said, was “tighten up his messaging” and enforce team rules more strictly via player fines. “If a lift starts at 9 in the first couple of days, then it becomes 9:02, and then two weeks later that’s 9:07, and then all of a sudden it’s 9:13,” Phillips said. “I’m like, ‘Hey, that’s 13 minutes of a day where the Packers are gaining that on us.’ And so I think we’ve tightened up, and that was messaging to other stuff. Missing meals; before, it wasn’t a big deal. Now, it’s a bigger deal. Curfew; not a big deal, now, a bigger deal.
“There needs to be boundaries. We can have complete freedom within that, but it needs to exist, and I think he has learned some of that. And good on him for doing that.”
O’Connell’s instincts toward empathy and his focus on building confidence, particularly in avoiding teamwide callouts, aligns with current sports psychology’s thinking about the most effective methods for coaching modern professional athletes, said Dr. Brandonn S. Harris, the president of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology and a professor of sport and exercise psychology at Georgia Southern University.
“It avoids alienating the individual,” Harris said, “and presents an opportunity for growth and learning if you call the person in and help them understand why something is important, why we do it this way and why we need you as a member of this team to execute better. If you do that, and you explain the ‘why’ behind it, you’re supporting their autonomy and allow them to approach their job with more confidence and understanding and more commitment.”
O’Connell’s private demeanor is not always as sunny as the one he projects in public. “He’s a very intense person and an extremely competitive person,” safety Harrison Smith said. And twice during an interview with ESPN, O’Connell, without prompting, drew a distinction between empathetic leadership and weakness.
“Sometimes people confuse positivity and some of the things that we’ve talked about with ‘soft’ or not having ‘grit’ or the things that I think make up what this building has become,” he said. “Which is authentically a mentally and physically tough team that builds each other up for reasons that are not about ourselves. It’s about the guy next to you.”
Later he added: “Nothing about what I’m talking about is soft or sensitive. It’s not things like that. It’s OK to care about people, and it’s OK to demand that they accept the responsibility of coming to this organization and knowing what’s important.”
IN SOME WAYS, O’Connell is on a mission to avenge his playing career. He lasted one season with the New England Patriots after they selected him in the third round of the 2008 draft, and he spent three more seasons elsewhere as a backup. He remembers the day it all started to crash — and how much O’Connell the coach could have helped O’Connell the quarterback.
The Patriots were playing Washington in their third preseason game on Aug. 28, 2009. Quarterback Tom Brady and the rest of the first-team offense left the game earlier than scheduled, giving O’Connell a chance to lead the second team against Washington’s starters — a perfect opportunity to lock down the job as Brady’s backup.
Instead, he flopped. O’Connell completed 3 of 10 passes for 18 yards and two interceptions. The Patriots waived him the next day.
“My mindset was, ‘Don’t screw it up and don’t be the reason why,'” O’Connell said. “And that was not the mindset you need to have in that moment. So one negative play turned into two, and then three, and it kind of snowballed to the point where I look back at that opportunity and say, ‘Did I really even take on the challenge? Or was I so self-consumed with worry and doubt and the bad things that might happen, and what it’s going to mean for my career?’
“I can vividly remember being in my uniform with my helmet on and just not being in the right headspace.”
While making clear he blames no one but himself for the turn of events, he verbalized how, as a coach, he would have handled a player in a similar situation.
“I would’ve literally said, ‘Man, what an opportunity,'” he said. “I would have said, ‘Hey, just don’t forget all the things that you’ve been working on. There’s going to be some good plays I call, and there’s going to be some plays where you got to make me right, and we’re in this together, and ultimately we’re going to make this a successful opportunity. And no matter what happens, we’re going to make sure that you know that you aren’t out there alone.’
“That’s how I think you build confidence.”
He insists he’s not scarred by the outcome of his playing career — “I don’t have any deep-rooted things going on there,” he said earlier this season — and he has chided himself for being “narcissistic” in relating so many of his coaching decisions to his playing career.
But in speaking to ESPN, O’Connell acknowledged that his coaching career is built on helping players navigate the kind of shortcomings he experienced.
“I want to make sure that our players, no matter what, look at me and my coaching staff and the resources we have for them in this building and understand that all we’re trying to do is make sure that they can reach their potential as a player,” he said.
“I want us to look back on it and say, ‘I don’t know if we’ve ever had a player here say they wished they would’ve gone somewhere else, that they made a mistake coming here.'”
Few could argue that point when players and coaches gathered in the team’s locker room after their Week 17 victory over the Green Bay Packers. Darnold hadn’t yet joined them because he was conducting media interviews on the field, but the group decided to wait for him before O’Connell began a postgame speech.
KO watching the culture he’s built 🥺 pic.twitter.com/KreKw1MCkv
— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) December 30, 2024
When he arrived, players spontaneously showered him with water and lifted him up on their shoulders. Some of them sang “Many Men” by 50 Cent, one of the team’s anthems.
As they celebrated, O’Connell stood against a wall, as far back from the crowd as he could get. He held a football in the air — old habits die hard — and smiled.
The quarterback whisperer had done more than elevate Darnold. He had built a culture in his own image.
ESPN staff writers Sarah Barshop and Stephen Holder contributed to this story.
