O’Connell Faces Major Test After Minnesota Vikings Suffer Brutal Defeat

This is when Kevin O’Connell’s coaching career truly begins.

Adversity has hit the Minnesota Vikings, and it came in the form of wind storm out of Dallas. The seven-game winning streak is over, and it ended in decisive fashion. The Vikings did not get beaten at the wire by a big play. They got beaten badly from start to finish by the Cowboys, and there will be plenty of noise as a result.

O’Connell has to find a way to make both the 40-3 defeat to the Cowboys and the resulting noise lose their significance. The Vikings had put together a 8-1 record because the team had talent, intelligence and the ability to make big plays at big moments. It allowed them to build a big lead in the NFC North and feel good about the future.

“This league has a way of humbling any football team at any point in time if you don’t play good football,” O’Connell said. “And we did not tonight.”

Good coaches know that all teams get beaten, and many championship teams absorb some hellacious beatings along the way. Teams like the Raiders, the 49ers, the Steelers, the Cowboys and the Patriots all faced humiliation along the way to a championship. So, there’s no reason for the Vikings – or any winning team – to stop believing in themselves and listen to the critics.

That’s the first part of O’Connell’s job. Everything was going well in his first year as head coach, and he was being lauded as a young genius because of his innovative play calling. But unless the coach is Paul Brown, Sid Gillman or Bill Walsh, it is not about inventing new plays and shocking the opposition with inventiveness.

It is about building a team that believes in itself no matter what. O’Connell probably has some idea of how it’s done because he was with the Los Angeles Rams as they built towards their Super Bowl championship. He saw how Sean McVay did it and observed how that coach rallied his team when things did not go well.

There may be a strong foundation to the 2022 Vikings. While they were finding ways to beat the Lions, Cardinals, Commanders and Bills, the talk was about the feeling of camaraderie in the locker room. That the players believed in each other and the coaching staff.

Kirk Cousins is playing for Za’Darius Smith, Dalvin Cook is playing for Harrison Smith, Justin Jefferson is playing for Danielle Hunter and Adam Thielen is playing for Patrick Peterson. All of these players are playing for each other and their coaches. There is a lightness in the lockerroom that was not there in the latter years of the Mike Zimmer regime.

The former coach was an old-school disciplinarian who had some degree of success with the team, but had also endured a series of painful defeats. As the years went on, those defeats weighed on the coach, his staff and his players. By the time 2021 season was halfway over, it was clear that the Vikings would not turn things around under his leadership.

O’Connell’s thoughts and teachings have more to do with the offensive side of football, but he has given an indication that he knows that head coaching is about keeping a team together, getting it to believe in itself and playing for the guy next to you. At least that’s what it looks like to this point.

O’Connell has to show he is strong enough to help his players keep it together and continue to have the drive and confidence to win once again.

There is certainly no time to feel sorry for themselves as the Vikings will be back at U.S. Bank Stadium on Thanksgiving night against Bill Belichick and the Patriots.

That’s a good thing, because the Vikings must start focusing on an opponent that has seen its share of ups and downs over the last two-plus seasons. These are not the championship Patriots, but Belichick certainly can wring every bit of ability out of his players.

Are there specific problems? Of course. Left tackle Christian Darrisaw suffered a concussion and won’t play against the Patriots. While he was beaten decisively early in the game by Micah Parsons of the Cowboys, he was Minnesota’s best offensive lineman through the first half of the season.

The Vikings must do a much better job of protecting Cousins who was sacked seven times and opening holes for Cook. The defense must assert itself and find a way to get off the field after third-down plays.

These are every-day requirements in football, and coaches can come up with plans and schemes. However the hard part of coaching is keeping the team together after humiliation has come visiting.

O’Connell’s job is to make sure it doesn’t stay around for weeks at a time. His coaching career begins in earnest.