Coaching

The two minute offense could not settle for a field goal they had to drive down the field and score a TD, and score a TD they did.

Coaching is getting better. . . but why do we need to keep Cousins?  Give me a rookie with this staff and a better defensive line.  There is a lot of talent on this team to elevate a young QB

I predicted the first 4 plays of our offense. And so did the Falcons.

KOC has been better this year and having Flores run the defense has been huge. Sucks he's probably going to be poached this offseason, but I'm thoroughly enjoying having confidence in the coaching staff on both sides of the ball. Hasn't been this good since Zimmer and Shurmur six years ago 

Great win, but I am not sold on either coach, KOC's play calling and game management is still questionable and the last drive made us forget that the defense got completely run over with 12 runs in a row all the way down the field for the potential winning TD.  Not sure how Flores makes no adjustments there.  We gave up 28 to Heinke and not a great offense, not a Flores fan.  

@"Skodin" said: Coaching is getting better. . . but why do we need to keep Cousins?  Give me a rookie with this staff and a better defensive line.  There is a lot of talent on this team to elevate a young QB

Im not sure any are ready to lead a high octane offense in 24. 

@"JR44" said: Great win, but I am not sold on either coach, KOC's play calling and game management is still questionable and the last drive made us forget that the defense got completely run over with 12 runs in a row all the way down the field for the potential winning TD.  Not sure how Flores makes no adjustments there.  We gave up 28 to Heinke and not a great offense, not a Flores fan.  

Kudos to the coaching staff. KOC is growing and BFlo has got his guys hungry and ready to play 

@"AGRforever" said:

@"Skodin" said: Coaching is getting better. . . but why do we need to keep Cousins?  Give me a rookie with this staff and a better defensive line.  There is a lot of talent on this team to elevate a young QB

We’re going to play ourselves out of drafting Williams, Maye & Mccarthy and Penix is a big injury risk. 

Im not sure any are ready to lead a high octane offense in 24. 

Crazy that this was the most points scored by the Vikings this season considering all the offensive talent.

@"AGRforever" said:

@"JR44" said: Great win, but I am not sold on either coach, KOC's play calling and game management is still questionable and the last drive made us forget that the defense got completely run over with 12 runs in a row all the way down the field for the potential winning TD.  Not sure how Flores makes no adjustments there.  We gave up 28 to Heinke and not a great offense, not a Flores fan.  

The defense with virtually the same players got run over every drive last year. Imagine what theyed look like with a few studs. 

@"AGRforever" said: Atlanta should be embarrassed by what we did today. 

The Vikings coaching staff is elite. You don’t get “lucky” as often as we have without a team and a culture that has wholey bought into what they’re doing. 

Dobbs made some great plays today, but our defense allowed us to stay in the game. A defense that was a major liability last year. 

Get a rookie QB in to sit behind Cousins and get ready for a great ride. I’m convinced KOC is the coach to finally bring a SB to MN. 

@"AGRforever" said:

@"Skodin" said: Coaching is getting better. . . but why do we need to keep Cousins?  Give me a rookie with this staff and a better defensive line.  There is a lot of talent on this team to elevate a young QB

We’re going to play ourselves out of drafting Williams, Maye & Mccarthy and Penix is a big injury risk. 

Im not sure any are ready to lead a high octane offense in 24. 

@"Montana Tom" said:

@"AGRforever" said:

@"Skodin" said: Coaching is getting better. . . but why do we need to keep Cousins?  Give me a rookie with this staff and a better defensive line.  There is a lot of talent on this team to elevate a young QB

We’re going to play ourselves out of drafting Williams, Maye & Mccarthy and Penix is a big injury risk. 

Im not sure any are ready to lead a high octane offense in 24. 

After USC's slide this season (and after Williams' meltdown on Saturday), I would not pick him in the third round even.  Maye overrated.  Penix or Bo Nix (Oregon) maybe.  Either way, the grass may not be greener on the other side of the fence...Hall and Dobbs may be the answer...check back with me in two months.

@"Montana Tom" said:

After USC's slide this season (and after Williams' meltdown on Saturday), I would not pick him in the third round even.  Maye overrated.  Penix or Bo Nix (Oregon) maybe.  Either way, the grass may not be greener on the other side of the fence...Hall and Dobbs may be the answer...check back with me in two months.

@"JimmyinSD" said:

@"AGRforever" said:

@"JR44" said: Great win, but I am not sold on either coach, KOC's play calling and game management is still questionable and the last drive made us forget that the defense got completely run over with 12 runs in a row all the way down the field for the potential winning TD.  Not sure how Flores makes no adjustments there.  We gave up 28 to Heinke and not a great offense, not a Flores fan.  

The defense with virtually the same players got run over every drive last year. Imagine what theyed look like with a few studs. 

How you going to afford those studs if you keep Cousins?  ( please don't say push more cap hits down the road )

KOC is a hell of a coach.

The intentionality with which Kevin O’Connell operated yesterday is something to behold. Said that he was giving Josh Dobbs the play language, waiting for him to relay to the huddle, and then after that walking him through the meaning of the play he’d just said. Remains so wild.

— Alec Lewis (@alec_lewis) November 6, 2023

@"StickyBun" said: KOC is a hell of a coach.

The intentionality with which Kevin O’Connell operated yesterday is something to behold. Said that he was giving Josh Dobbs the play language, waiting for him to relay to the huddle, and then after that walking him through the meaning of the play he’d just said. Remains so wild.

— Alec Lewis (@alec_lewis) November 6, 2023

DAMN: Minnesota #Vikings quarterback Josh Dobbs posted the highest QBR of any player on Sunday! 💪🔥 #SKOL pic.twitter.com/BeQ5TzVJmI

— SKOR North - Minnesota Sports (@SKORNorth) November 6, 2023

Kevin O'Connell is such an amazing coach. pic.twitter.com/ID96zNxt4W

— vikesinsider (@vikesinsider) November 5, 2023

How Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell talked Joshua Dobbs through a comeback win, seven seconds at a time"This was special" was a common refrain after a week that had tested the Vikings academically and emotionally as much as it had physically.
Seconds after Brandon Powell spiked the football he'd caught from Joshua Dobbs for the game-winning touchdown in the Vikings' 31-28 victory in Atlanta on Sunday, assistant equipment manager Adam Groene walked behind Kevin O'Connell, retrieving the headset that bore the brunt of the coach's own celebration.

"Yeah, I spiked it. I may have pulled a muscle in my neck. I'm not sure what I did," O'Connell said. "That was all . Everything that we had as an organization being put forward, regardless of the circumstance, just trying to get this one. This one will be special to me for a long time."
The headset flew like a mortarboard cap as the coach celebrated at the end of a week that had tested the Vikings academically and emotionally as much as it had physically. By the end of the win, where Dobbs played all but 11 snaps after joining the Vikings on Tuesday night, team officials were privately glowing about what O'Connell and his staff had done. "I mean, we kind of knew," one said, "but this was special."
Two former Vikings quarterbacks, both with NFL MVP awards to their names, were less reserved about it.
"It's just a phenomenal job done by Kevin in making the offense work," said Vikings Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton, whom O'Connell invited to speak to the team in Atlanta on Saturday night. "Kevin had to call the plays and put in the right positions. How do you do that in five days?"
Said 2002 NFL MVP Rich Gannon: "It's a real credit to , and a credit to Kevin and the coaching staff for getting a guy ready to play on just a handful of days."
O'Connell, a former QB himself, had prepped quarterbacks to run an NFL offense in short order before, but never while also readying a rookie to start. After 25 regular-season games with Cousins, he got his 18th win in his 26th game on Sunday with a quarterback he'd only coached in snippets of time.
"That's the crazy thing," O'Connell said.
Quarterbacks coach Chris O'Hara was getting Hall ready, with O'Connell spending time with the rookie too. It was Grant Udinski, assistant quarterbacks coach, who was with Dobbs — "Josh with his helmet on, hearing plays, going through cadence, walking through a lot of those things," O'Connell said.
Dobbs graduated from Tennessee with a 4.0 GPA and a degree in aerospace engineering; he is, in other words, the rare quarterback who can look at an NFL playbook, say it's not rocket science and mean it.
The fact he'd started eight games for the Cardinals this year meant the speed of a regular-season game wouldn't be foreign to him. By the weekend, he'd told coaches he was ready to run anything they'd put on the call sheet for the Falcons game. "Whether it's no-huddle, whether it's tempo, whether it's our game plan call — whatever it is, I got it," he said Sunday. "If they started pulling stuff from , I might be a little handcuffed out there, but if you put it on the call sheet, I got it."
The Vikings had to test the theory just 11 snaps into the game when Hall left with a concussion. "My job in that moment is to eliminate the chaos," O'Connell said Monday.
He spent more of the game in Dobbs' earpiece than he does with Cousins, trying to provide seven-second bursts of coaching before his headset cut off with 15 seconds left on the play clock while trying to resist his own temptation to overcoach. TV timeouts, O'Connell said, gave him more time to gauge how Dobbs felt navigating the offense.
"I started to get a pretty good feel with where he was at, and his ability to know formations and the intent of certain plays," O'Connell said. "It allowed me to get a little bit deeper into the footwork, what to do with his eyes and what I was thinking as the play-caller, which is pretty similar to what I would do in a lot of situations with Kirk."
The Vikings handled the day with the efficiency O'Connell had stressed all week, committing just one accepted penalty for 4 yards and substituting quickly enough to buy extra seconds for the coach to talk to Dobbs. On T.J. Hockenson's 29-yard catch-and-run in the third quarter, guard Dalton Risner was the first person to pick up the tight end so the Vikings could get back in the huddle.
"You highlight it, you talk about it, you emphasize it and you just hope it comes to life," O'Connell said. "That's what allowed it: the substitution coaches being on top of it, , 'Hey, I need this guy. I need this guy,' making sure we're in and out of the huddle. Because every moment we broke that huddle and the quarterback wasn't talking to the guys in the huddle, I was going to use that time to try to help."
A decade ago, when the Vikings tried to get Josh Freeman ready to start 15 days after signing him, the result was an infamous Monday night disaster. In 2016, they waited a week to play Sam Bradford after trading for the seventh-year QB in the wake of Teddy Bridgewater's knee injury, viewing veteran Shaun Hill as the safer option for the season opener in Tennessee.
Cousins, at times, has referenced the movie "Argo," quoting Ben Affleck's character's line about deploying "the best of the bad options." Faced with the predicament of turning from a rookie starter to a veteran who hadn't practiced all week, the Vikings traversed a tightrope that has snapped under many teams. O'Connell credited Dobbs and his coaches on Monday. Those who'd watched it raved about the head coach who oversaw it.
"Josh should get a lot of credit, but Kevin should get credit, too," Tarkenton said. "If I was in Kevin's position, I would throw my hands up."
https://www.startribune.com/vikings-falcons-kevin-oconnell-joshua-dobbs/600317709/