Minnesota Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell only threw six passes as an NFL quarterback.
The 2008 third-round pick’s playing career never panned out as he’d planned.
He still made an impact.
Vikings team reporter Eric Smith spoke with several former players and coaches who crossed paths with O’Connell along his journey to becoming a head coach in the NFL and gathered an interesting anecdote involving the man who drafted him, Bill Belichick.
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‘You’re Going to Be One Hell of a Coach One Day’
O’Connell, speaking with Smith, reflected on his brief playing career that was the launchpad for his rise to becoming the league’s second-youngest coach at the age of 36 — seven months older than Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay.
Selected in the third round of the 2018 draft by the New England Patriots, O’Connell saw the only NFL regular-season action in his five-year playing career in his rookie season, playing in two games in a relief role.
“I’ve used this joke before, but my career as a player provided a great platform for me as a coach because I did spend a lot of time watching games from the sideline,” O’Connell said in his first press conference as head coach on February 17, per Smith. “I will say that with that becomes the ability to see the game in a way that I feel very prepared to call the game.”
The Patriots released O’Connell in the 2009 offseason. He was picked up by the Detroit Lions, who later traded him to the New York Jets, where he first met recently appointed Vikings assistant head coach and then-Jets defensive coordinator Mike Pettine.
Pettine reflected on O’Connell’s two-year stint in New York, where he was marred by injury but named a team captain as the team’s backup quarterback behind Mark Sanchez. Pettine said that in passing, Belicheck, who had been a part of a New England regime that released O’Connell, had nothing but high praise for his leadership and football IQ.
“First impression? I heard it from the [Jets] offensive staff before I really connected with him because I was on the defensive side. I kept hearing, ‘This guy is sharp as hell.’ Then we were getting close to New England week and it was, ‘Hey, you have to make sure you talk to him.’ That’s when we started to connect. He’d come into my office and the next thing you know, 10 minutes turned into 20. It was easy with him, and the maturity struck me,” Pettine said, per Vikings.com. “This was a guy that was already a high-level thinker and could process the game quickly, and you just don’t see that often. I know Bill Belichick had said something like this to him, but I told him, jokingly, after a period of time, ‘Hey, you’re not very good as a quarterback, but you’re going to be a hell of a coach someday.’ ”
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Former NFL QBs Praise O’Connell
Courtesy of VikingsKevin O’Connell
Smith also spoke with two quarterbacks that O’Connell backed up in Matt Cassell and Sanchez. Cassell, filling in for an injured Tom Brady in 2008, spoke to O’Connell’s support despite the competition between the two for the starting job.
“It was pretty cool to see because he knew that at any point he could potentially play. The way he prepared and went about it was outstanding. He asked all the right questions,” Cassell said. “But I knew he’d be a great coach because of the support factor in that room. You didn’t feel he was there to take your job. He was there genuinely to support you, make you better, be a sounding board. He was a guy I trusted and a guy I loved having in the room. If you look back at that situation, that’s what Kevin is and who he is as a person.”
Sanchez echoed O’Connell’s ability to build him up as the team’s starter, helping Sanchez, a rookie at the time, lead the Jets to the AFC Championship game in back-to-back seasons in 2009 and 2010.
“He’s definitely a team-first guy. Coaches started to realize how sharp he was and what a commodity he was. You know how you’re going to play a team and you snag a person from their practice squad to try and download [info]? We did it here and there, and they’d let us sit down with that player, like a DB from a team you’re about to play. Kevin would be in on those meetings and would ask brilliant questions…I was learning a ton, and the questions he’d ask these DBs and linebackers, it was like he was speaking at a coaching level,” Sanchez said. “He’d come up with a combination that would beat that specific version of a coverage. I was just like, ‘Holy s****. That’s really what this game is.’ It’s all predicated on matchups. You have to have 10 to 15 passes [per game] where the QB has to drop back, go through multiple reads and throw an accurate ball when it comes down to crunch time. We’d get into some dicey third downs, and that’s where he’d teach me and coach me. He’d have plays picked out for certain situations. It was uncanny, dude.”
Sanchez added that O’Connell’s rise to becoming an NFL coach has been on a fast track given the pedigree of coaches he played under.
“Dude, this is so cool for him, and I’m thrilled for his success. It’s well-deserved. But he’s been on the fast track, and he’s got such a range and variety of [coaching] trees he’s been around, from Belichick to Chip Kelly to the Shanahan and McVay tree. He’s been around Rex Ryan and Mike Pettine. Really good defensive and offensive styles. In this league, you can win a lot of different ways. There are staples, but there are different styles of those staples, and Kev’ has seen a million of them. You want to be a defensive powerhouse and win 14-6? Kevin has seen that. If you’re going to be an offensive machine, Kevin has been there. He has such a breadth of knowledge, but he’s still the same dude. Laughing, smiling. Beautiful family. Me, him and [Mark] Brunell got so tight. For the bye week, you usually want to get away from everybody. But we’re like, ‘Hey, where can we go? Let’s go camping with the boys.’ He’s just such a good dude.’
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