Despite Loud Rumors, Minnesota Vikings And Jim Harbaugh Were Not Ideal Match

The Vikings have their new coach, and it is not Jim Harbaugh.

The romance between the team and the University of Michigan head coach intensified in the days before his Wednesday visit to the team’s headquarters, but those feelings did not lead to a job offer. The interview many thought would be a coronation for Harbaugh because of his impressive achievements as a head coach at both the NFL and the college level turned out to be a serious meeting for both sides to get to know each other.

Apparently, the match was not ideal. Instead, the Vikings will announce the hiring of Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell as the team’s 10^th head coach after the Super Bowl.

During Harbaugh’s run with the San Francisco 49ers from 2011 through 2014, he was a coach who wanted things done his way and was not known for building a collaborative atmosphere. Collaboration is one of the major points that was spelled out by Kwesi Adofo-Mensah when he was hired as Minnesota’s general manager last week.

So, that issue may have lingered over Harbaugh even before he flew into the Twin Cities to interview for the position. The biggest issue facing the team is what it is going to do with quarterback Kirk Cousins. While Cousins has put impressive statistics on the board in each of his four seasons with the Vikings, his abilities to make plays with the game on the line – especially against upper-echelon opponents – is not impressive.

There are many critics who believe the Vikings will never become an elite team with Cousins under center. The team has not said whether it wants to continue with Cousins at quarterback, and it is not a simple decision. The team is on the hook to pay Cousins $35 million in salary in 2022 with a cap hit of $45 million.

Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell will have to make a decision about Cousins, but they have some time to figure out the best way to handle the situation. Clearly, cutting the quarterback and getting hit with $45 million in dead cap money is not the right way to go. The Vikings will need to upgrade several positions this year, and that would be a painful undertaking with such a significant dead-cap hit.

The alternatives are a trade or possibly extending Cousins to lessen the cap hit. To those who have studied Cousins thoroughly, the trade scenario may be the one that makes the most sense.

It will take time to finalize a decision and then work out a trade or an extension. That takes a high degree of patience and the ability to play the waiting game. Patience and holding back one’s feelings have never been Harbaugh’s strong suit.

If he let it be known that he did not want Cousins as his quarterback under any circumstances, that would have made hiring him as coach all but impossible. Adofo-Mensah has the business of football to consider before he makes all his final decisions, and the team has not reached any conclusion yet.

At least any conclusion that it is willing to make public.

While that scenario is speculative, it clearly makes sense. Harbaugh likes things done his way, and that’s something that Adofo-Mensah knows because they were both with the San Francisco 49ers at the same time. And even if Harbaugh and the general manager were of a similar mind on Cousins and other vital issues, Harbaugh’s track record indicates that he still wants the final say.

O’Connell is a 36-year-old who reportedly had an impressive interview with the Vikings, giving a full evaluation of the roster and offering his assessment of Cousins. Those two had worked together in 2017, when O’Connell was the quarterbacks coach in Washington and Cousins was in his final season with that franchise.

O’Connell is like so many other first-year head coaches in the NFL. He is coming into the position as one of the “hot” assistants from a successful team, and he is brimming with ideas and confidence. Whether that translates into a successful career as a head coach is something that has to play out over the coming years.

Harbaugh would have been the proven leader, but one that comes with quite a bit of baggage. The Vikings did not embrace him, and they are clearly a team that remains in transition.