Ya Let’s hold off on that Kevin O’Connell contract extension

KOC will definitely get extended, but maybe we’ve transitioned from “KOC is Coach of the Year/Offensive Guru/QB Whisperer/Just back up the brinks truck” to “He’s a pretty good coach that still has some flaws that keep him out of the top tier of coaches”

medaille wrote:
KOC will definitely get extended, but maybe we’ve transitioned from “KOC is Coach of the Year/Offensive Guru/QB Whisperer/Just back up the brinks truck” to “He’s a pretty coach that still has some flaws that keep him out of the top tier of coaches”

This

DH11 wrote:
Wow I really don’t appreciate being called a troll. I’ve seen three of the 4  Vikings Super Bowl losses so I go back a lot longer than you I bet? I’m assuming if you can’t see the shortcomings in  Kevin O’Connell then you are just looking at it through purple colored glasses he was thoroughly out classed the last two week.  Your quarterback was off which in turn you need to change up your scheme and go shorter routes,  and quick hitting patterns. It’s not brain surgery. Everything doesn’t have to be 20 yards downfield.  I like Kevin O’Connell he seems like a good young coach, but he has a lot to learn about making in game adjustments. He was absolutely atrocious.

StickierBuns wrote:

So who's your 'top tier of coaches'? And what's your criteria? And why are you blaming him again for obvious Darnold shortcomings? What are his flaws? 

Nobody's perfect and neither is KOC. But if I hear one more dim perspective of how KOC didn't gameplan 'short throws or check downs' I'm going to burp up bile. They were there.....Sam didn't utilize them or see them in his skittish frenzy. Execution is everything. John McKay's great quote when asked what he thought about the team's execution in a particular game and he famously said, "I'm all for it".

Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men......they don't work if the players don't perform.

It's the million $ question and one that has gotten asked so much over the years - and ALWAYS after a loss. 

I honestly dont have a handle on whether (or not) KOC had a great game plan that Darnold couldn't execute (or our OL) or if KOC completely didnt learn from the Lions or last Rams game? 

The truth is that it may be both.

lol
Well done

purplefaithful wrote:

It's the million $ question and one that has gotten asked so much over the years - and ALWAYS after a loss. 

I honestly dont have a handle on whether (or not) KOC had a great game plan that Darnold couldn't execute (or our OL) or if KOC completely didnt learn from the Lions or last Rams game? 

The truth is that it may be both.

It probably IS both. It's possible KOC could've done a better job with the game plan after what happened in Detroit. That doesn't mean he's not a terrific coach, deserving of a new contract. The good far outweighs the bad in his case. But he's not flawless. I'm sure he'd be the first to admit that, which is another thing that makes him a good coach. 

It's also obvious Darnold was terrible again, held the ball too long and missed open receivers. That doesn't mean he wasn't pretty damn spectacular for most of the year deserving of a Pro Bowl nod and a bigger contract. 

All of this can be true.

StickierBuns wrote:

So what is KOC supposed to do here when he tells Sam what to do and he shits himself? From Mike Silver, The Athletic:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6060488/2025/01/14/vikings-playoffs-loss-sam-darnold-kevin-oconnell/

Strangle the Ginger Jesus.

If KOC needs to tell his QB what he should look for and in what order and what to do... He was never KOCs QB to start.

StickierBuns wrote:

KOC is managing chaos at this point. Darnold is pissing down his leg on national TV in the playoffs and he's trying to calmly make chicken salad out of chicken shit. I can't imagine how frustrated Kevin was at the point he realized Darnold was off the rails. The game was like sand through his fingers.

so why was putting Mullins in never an option?  why carry a guy all year if you have no intention of using him when the team needed a different QB the most?  This is where I question KOC the most from last nights game, I dont know that I think Mullins would have won the game for the Vikes,  but I am fairly confident he wouldnt have shit the bed as bad a Sam did and if it was done early enough,  it may have been enough to alter the outcome.

Fuck,  Daniel Jones would have been a better option than Darnold and I doubt he knows jack shit about the play book.

Our team lost 4 games to two teams this season. Both those teams have superior rosters to ours at this point. These losses totally reinforced the shortcomings, that we all know exist on our roster. We have 25 free agents this upcoming season so things will dramatically change. Our coaches did manage to catch lightning in a bottle to win 14 games, until ultimately we were overmatched. We have some excellent pieces to build around our young top 10 QB. I want to see what this coaching staff can do w/ superior rosters going forward…

Kentis wrote:
Our team lost 4 games to two teams this season. Both those teams have superior rosters to ours at this point. These losses totally reinforced the shortcomings, that we all know exist on our roster. We have 25 free agents this upcoming season so things will dramatically change. Our coaches did manage to catch lightning in a bottle to win 14 games, until ultimately we were overmatched. We have some excellent pieces to build around our young top 10 QB. I want to see what this coaching staff can do w/ superior rosters going forward…

Get outta here with that logical take, Kentis...

Lol

StickierBuns wrote:

So who's your 'top tier of coaches'? And what's your criteria? And why are you blaming him again for obvious Darnold shortcomings? What are his flaws? 

Nobody's perfect and neither is KOC. But if I hear one more dim perspective of how KOC didn't gameplan 'short throws or check downs' I'm going to burp up bile. They were there.....Sam didn't utilize them or see them in his skittish frenzy. Execution is everything. John McKay's great quote when asked what he thought about the team's execution in a particular game and he famously said, "I'm all for it".

Sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men......they don't work if the players don't perform.

Why do you call them “Darnold obvious shortcomings” but don’t mention “KOC’s obvious shortcomings”?  They weren’t here for 14 games and 10 days ago everyone … EVERYONE …was saying Darnold was going to get a huge contract and we were going to franchise him and trade him or keep him for big bucks.  Saying these two losses are purely on Darnold is lazy, as if he forgot how to play QB when we played the Lions or Rams twice, and we all knew this is who he was.  You could just as easily say that KOC forgot how to coach.

While maybe you were seeing wide open receivers running routes all game, what I saw was no receivers on the screen most of the game except for stuff thrown behind the LOS.  I saw an OLine that let the interior collapse and let many free rushers get to the QB.  I saw an OLine that completely forgot how to block stunts.  I don’t recall any obvious or at least effective adjustments made to increase protection for Darnold.  If you have a compilation video of all the wide open receivers that were open while Darnold was casually sitting in the pocket surveying the field, I’d love to see it.  How many 3 step drops were there or bootlegs?  When you saw the blitz, where were the hot routes?

Every year, KOC’s QB is in the top 10 most sacked, most hit, most pressured and his QBs hold the ball the longest, despite him having some of the best receiving targets in the league and the best tackle duo in the league.  All the other teams above him are the dumpster fire teams.  Kirk Cousins said this was a very complicated offense and it took him a while to learn it.  Every year KOC’s offense can’t run the ball when it needs to. 

This offense has some very obvious flaws in it.  I don’t think I’m reading things into it because I hate KOC or love Darnold.  It’s a boom or bust offense and when the protection isn’t there to get the booms, there’s not much left in the playbook.

Yeah, at some point if your quarterback is struggling, it’s on the head coach to call some different plays possibly some three step drops. How about a few hot reads once in a while it looked to me every pass there were three wide receivers & the tight end 15 to 20 yards downfield you just can’t win in the NFL like that you have to hot reads. Kfan now taking KOC to task and they are completely correct he was horrible these past 2 games.

DH11 wrote:
Yeah, at some point if your quarterback is struggling, it’s on the head coach to call some different plays possibly some three step drops. How about a few hot reads once in a while it looked to me every pass there were three wide receivers & the tight end 15 to 20 yards downfield you just can’t win in the NFL like that you have to hot reads. Kfan now taking KOC to task and they are completely correct he was horrible these past 2 games.

Who is taking him to task on KFAN?

supafreak84 wrote:

Who is taking him to task on KFAN?

I heard it as i came home,  maybe siefert?  I dont listen enough anymore to recognize most voices,   but the end of the first half with going for it on 4th down and giving tbe rams the short field.  Should have punted to the rams,  pining them deep with only 1 timeout left l, instead the field position  allowed them to go up by multiple scores was pretty dumb.  Also taking not using a time out in the late 3rd early 4th.

The going for it or not is a head scratcher sometimes for me,  why when the O is a mess does he try instead of punting and working to halftime,  hes done it several times this year and it usually bites him in the ass.

StickierBuns wrote:
I'm without a doubt the worst individual game predictor on the board....uncannily bad actually. Consistently. Feeling mostly unconfident about Minnesota's chances tonight but that's mostly due to the egg laying by the offense last week in Detroit. Hoping for the best:

Los Angeles 31, Minnesota 20. 

StickierBuns wrote:

So what is KOC supposed to do here when he tells Sam what to do and he shits himself? From Mike Silver, The Athletic:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6060488/2025/01/14/vikings-playoffs-loss-sam-darnold-kevin-oconnell/

What he should have done is put Mullens in. It couldn't be much worse, it might have even been better. Sam had no chance, zero, zip, nada to win that game. Nick might just have completed some simple throws, released the ball quickly, given the team a glimmer of hope--basic QB stuff that broken-brain Sam couldn't.

What I want to know is, if KOC is really the "QB whisperer" then what did he whisper in Sam's ear the last two games? Sam completely lost his head, he looked like a high school kid out among men.

DH11 wrote:
Yeah, at some point if your quarterback is struggling, it’s on the head coach to call some different plays possibly some three step drops. How about a few hot reads once in a while it looked to me every pass there were three wide receivers & the tight end 15 to 20 yards downfield you just can’t win in the NFL like that you have to hot reads. Kfan now taking KOC to task and they are completely correct he was horrible these past 2 games.

You are watching a different game than I am. There were plays to be made, Darnold didn't make them.

comet52 wrote:

What he should have done is put Mullens in.  It couldn't be much worse, it might have even been better.  Sam had no chance, zero, zip, nada to win that game.  Nick might just have completed some simple throws, released the ball quickly, given the team a glimmer of hope--basic QB stuff that broken-brain Sam couldn't. 

What I want to know is, if KOC is really the "QB whisperer" then what did he whisper in Sam's ear the last two games?  Sam completely lost his head, he looked like a high school kid out among men.

So I guess that is KOC's fault?

hogjowlsjohnny wrote:

You are watching a different game than I am. There were plays to be made, Darnold didn't make them.

So I guess that is KOC's fault?

I asked the question, I didn't provide the answer because I don't know. But all year long the credit was going to KOC for taking a guy who looked like shit for 6 years and maxing him out. So does he bear any responsibility when the guy turns back into a pumpkin in the 2 games that matter the most?

comet52 wrote:

I asked the question, I didn't provide the answer because I don't know.  But all year long the credit was going to KOC for taking a guy who looked like shit for 6 years and maxing him out.  So does he bear any responsibility when the guy turns back into a pumpkin in the 2 games that matter the most?

KOC took Sam to be a bridge QB and paid him bridge money. Through his coaching, his offense and our weapons, Sam exploded, throwing for 4300 yards, 35 TDs and 12 INTs, winning 14 games, while his passer rating dropped below 100 in only 4 of 17 games. He won more games than this franchise has won in its 63 year history. About three times as many games as you predicted, by the way. He deserves a lot of credit for that. But it sounds like you're saying that after watching 16 games of Pro Bowl level QB play, KOC should've just known Sam was going to shit the bed in games 17 and 18. Ridiculous. 

But do I think KOC is blameless in what happened in Detroit and LA? No I don't. By the time the little headset scenario played out, we'd already given up 6 sacks. Why are we still dropping straight back and going deep? There's just not enough time. No Darrisaw, no O'Neill. And Sam is a shell. By that point the game probably should've changed. Rollouts, max protects, quick slants, I don't know, he's the OC.

MaroonBells wrote:

KOC took Sam to be a bridge QB and paid him bridge money. Through his coaching, his offense and our weapons, Sam exploded, throwing for 4300 yards, 35 TDs and 12 INTs, winning 14 games, while his passer rating dropped below 100 in only 4 of 17 games. He won more games than this franchise has won in its 63 year history. About three times as many games as you predicted, by the way. He deserves a lot of credit for that. But it sounds like you're saying that after watching 16 games of Pro Bowl level QB play, KOC should've just known Sam was going to shit the bed in games 17 and 18. Ridiculous. 

But do I think KOC is blameless in what happened in Detroit and LA? No I don't. By the time the little headset scenario played out, we'd already given up 6 sacks. Why are we still dropping straight back and going deep? There's just not enough time. No Darrisaw, no O'Neill. And Sam is a shell. By that point the game probably should've changed. Rollouts, max protects, quick slants, I don't know, he's the OC.

You're just making stuff up about me as usual. I predicted 6-7 wins, which was reasonable if Sam Darnold played all year long like he did in the last 2 games. So the coach gets credit for getting more out of a guy I certainly didn't believe in. But I never became a Sam Darnold believer regardless, because I saw how much he was getting away with all year long, including one of the highest turnover-worthy play rates in the league. To me this was Case Keenum part deux, a guy playing above his career averages and getting a lot of luck.

And yeah, the coach did a lot to keep him from melting down mentally which was his m.o. for 6 years until those last two games. Which is all I'm asking and all I said, despite you needing to make up stuff I didn't say and attribute it to me which is just.. weird. Why did he collapse again in the biggest games, the ones that really mattered? Was it KOC that collapsed and it rubbed off on Sam? Again, I don't know. I'm just asking.

And frankly I don't care, because I don't want Sam Darnold leading this team any more than I wanted Case Keenum back in 2018. I want to see what JJ McCarthy can do and if we've finally found a real franchise qb who can elevate the team and take it to a SB. Something we haven't had around here in 50 years.