01-15-2023, 05:40 PM
Sean McVay doesn’t have a playoff game to coach this season. So he can offer some pointers to Kevin O’Connell.Last season, McVay coached the Los Angeles Rams to a 23-20 win over the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl LVI with O’Connell as his offensive coordinator. Now, O’Connell is a rookie head coach for the Vikings who will make his playoff debut Sunday against the New York Giants at U.S. Bank Stadium.
It is not a long list of first-year NFL coaches who have taken teams deep into the playoffs. The only two to have won Super Bowls were Don McCafferty of the Baltimore Colts in the 1970 season and George Seifert of the San Francisco 49ers in the 1989 season. Three other rookie coaches have gone to the Super Bowl before losing: Red Miller of the Denver Broncos (1977), Bill Callahan of the Oakland Raiders (2002) and Jim Caldwell of the Indianapolis Colts (2009).
O’Connell, 37, steered the Vikings to a 13-4 record and is a strong candidate for NFL Coach of the Year. But he’ll take any extra help he can get in entering his first postseason.
“I have (communicated with) not only with Sean, but some other coaches that I’ve been around in my past,” O’Connell said. “A lot of it is, ‘Good luck.’ and, ‘Hey, proud of you,’ and things like that. But then there’s definitely some, if I’m leaning one way or the other with a decision about practice or scheduling or anything, there’s people I can reach out to. … (Those) former coaches and current coaches that I get to have dialogue with, those are resources and relationships that I value.”
O’Connell will be matching wits Sunday with another first-year coach in the Giants’ Brian Daboll. And it really helps O’Connell that he is just a year removed from helping lead the Rams to the championship. McVay called the offensive plays, but O’Connell played an integral role in putting together game plans during the title run.
“It helps a lot just because of the role I was in there and getting to work kind of side-by-side with Sean every single day,” said O’Connell, who calls Minnesota’s offensive plays. “Just going through the dialogue of how we wanted to do some of the little things, getting really focused on what was important and then watching how everything mattered. Those (playoff) games, when you look back on it, if one or two plays go the other way, the result could be completely different.”
On their way to hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy, the Rams won four playoff games, the last three by three points apiece. They defeated Tampa Bay 30-27 and San Francisco 20-17 before the Super Bowl win over the Bengals.
Does that trend sound familiar? The Vikings are an astounding 11-0 in one-score games this season, setting an NFL record for most such victories.
“I think that’s a product of building confidence, of being precise in the tough situations and playing with composure, so I think a lot of that you’ve got to give credit to coaching,” said hall of fame coach Tony Dungy, a former University of Minnesota quarterback. “They’ve really established that belief of players buying into the system, and that’s definitely a big part of those one-score wins.”
Dungy, who coached Indianapolis to a Super Bowl victory in the 2006 season and is now an NBC analyst, was impressed what O’Connell accomplished in his first season as a head coach on any level.
“To win 13 games, that’s what it’s all about, and I think for a first year it was a wonderful job, and they’re going to have some fun in the playoffs,” Dungy said.
But just as Dungy praised O’Connell, the Vikings coach returned some compliments. O’Connell said not long after he took the job last February, he began to pick Dungy’s brain.
“He reached out when I first got the job,” O’Connell said. “He does that Uncommon Award in (the Twin Cities). I went to that (last April) and spent some time with him and his wife. He is as special a human being as I’ve really come across in the NFL.
“(There have been) text messages here and there. There were some phone calls and things. I just kind of reached out once I met him and felt like I was building a relationship.”
It certainly doesn’t hurt to get advice from Super Bowl-winning head coaches. When O’Connell was a Washington assistant from 2017-19, he attended a coaching clinic where he met Mike Shanahan, who won championships with the Broncos in the 1997 and 1998 seasons.
The two have seen each other a few times over the past several years, including last August at the TCO Performance Center. Shanahan came in to watch the two days of a joint practice between the Vikings and 49ers because his son Kyle Shanahan is the San Francisco head coach.
“I really have always liked (O’Connell) as a person, and you can tell he’s one heck of a coach,” Shanahan said. “It doesn’t really surprise me the success that he’s had (this season). … At the end of the day, you’ve got to find a way to win, and to have that type of record in one-score games means you’re doing a lot of the right things day in and day out.”
https://www.twincities.com/2023/01/13/in-first-playoff-run-as-a-head-coach-vikings-kevin-oconnell-relying-on-experience-with-rams-advice-from-veteran-coaches/
It is not a long list of first-year NFL coaches who have taken teams deep into the playoffs. The only two to have won Super Bowls were Don McCafferty of the Baltimore Colts in the 1970 season and George Seifert of the San Francisco 49ers in the 1989 season. Three other rookie coaches have gone to the Super Bowl before losing: Red Miller of the Denver Broncos (1977), Bill Callahan of the Oakland Raiders (2002) and Jim Caldwell of the Indianapolis Colts (2009).
O’Connell, 37, steered the Vikings to a 13-4 record and is a strong candidate for NFL Coach of the Year. But he’ll take any extra help he can get in entering his first postseason.
“I have (communicated with) not only with Sean, but some other coaches that I’ve been around in my past,” O’Connell said. “A lot of it is, ‘Good luck.’ and, ‘Hey, proud of you,’ and things like that. But then there’s definitely some, if I’m leaning one way or the other with a decision about practice or scheduling or anything, there’s people I can reach out to. … (Those) former coaches and current coaches that I get to have dialogue with, those are resources and relationships that I value.”
O’Connell will be matching wits Sunday with another first-year coach in the Giants’ Brian Daboll. And it really helps O’Connell that he is just a year removed from helping lead the Rams to the championship. McVay called the offensive plays, but O’Connell played an integral role in putting together game plans during the title run.
“It helps a lot just because of the role I was in there and getting to work kind of side-by-side with Sean every single day,” said O’Connell, who calls Minnesota’s offensive plays. “Just going through the dialogue of how we wanted to do some of the little things, getting really focused on what was important and then watching how everything mattered. Those (playoff) games, when you look back on it, if one or two plays go the other way, the result could be completely different.”
On their way to hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy, the Rams won four playoff games, the last three by three points apiece. They defeated Tampa Bay 30-27 and San Francisco 20-17 before the Super Bowl win over the Bengals.
Does that trend sound familiar? The Vikings are an astounding 11-0 in one-score games this season, setting an NFL record for most such victories.
“I think that’s a product of building confidence, of being precise in the tough situations and playing with composure, so I think a lot of that you’ve got to give credit to coaching,” said hall of fame coach Tony Dungy, a former University of Minnesota quarterback. “They’ve really established that belief of players buying into the system, and that’s definitely a big part of those one-score wins.”
Dungy, who coached Indianapolis to a Super Bowl victory in the 2006 season and is now an NBC analyst, was impressed what O’Connell accomplished in his first season as a head coach on any level.
“To win 13 games, that’s what it’s all about, and I think for a first year it was a wonderful job, and they’re going to have some fun in the playoffs,” Dungy said.
But just as Dungy praised O’Connell, the Vikings coach returned some compliments. O’Connell said not long after he took the job last February, he began to pick Dungy’s brain.
“He reached out when I first got the job,” O’Connell said. “He does that Uncommon Award in (the Twin Cities). I went to that (last April) and spent some time with him and his wife. He is as special a human being as I’ve really come across in the NFL.
“(There have been) text messages here and there. There were some phone calls and things. I just kind of reached out once I met him and felt like I was building a relationship.”
It certainly doesn’t hurt to get advice from Super Bowl-winning head coaches. When O’Connell was a Washington assistant from 2017-19, he attended a coaching clinic where he met Mike Shanahan, who won championships with the Broncos in the 1997 and 1998 seasons.
The two have seen each other a few times over the past several years, including last August at the TCO Performance Center. Shanahan came in to watch the two days of a joint practice between the Vikings and 49ers because his son Kyle Shanahan is the San Francisco head coach.
“I really have always liked (O’Connell) as a person, and you can tell he’s one heck of a coach,” Shanahan said. “It doesn’t really surprise me the success that he’s had (this season). … At the end of the day, you’ve got to find a way to win, and to have that type of record in one-score games means you’re doing a lot of the right things day in and day out.”
https://www.twincities.com/2023/01/13/in-first-playoff-run-as-a-head-coach-vikings-kevin-oconnell-relying-on-experience-with-rams-advice-from-veteran-coaches/
B) pretty clever how the Giants rode their 2-5-1 finish to line up their preferred playoff opponent too…! 