Vikings Have a “Secret Superstar”
He is absolutely not a secret to Minnesota Vikings fans, but according to Pro Football Focus, right tackle Brian O’Neill is the team’s “secret superstar.”
Vikings Have a “Secret Superstar”
PFF named a secret superstar from each NFL team this week, with the NFL’s regular season and one round of the playoffs in the books. Per PFF, that’s O’Neill in Minnesota.
“Blocking for an offense featuring Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison and even Sam Darnold might not be as flashy, but it’s still worth recognizing. O’Neill was strong yet again this past year with a 79.3 PFF overall grade,” Bradley Locker explained.
Minnesota drafted O’Neill in Round 2 of the 2018 NFL Draft, so he’s one of the longest-tenured players at the moment, especially after general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s competitive rebuilding process, which spanned from 2022 to 2024. O’Neill is not a secret anything for Vikings faithful.
Locker added, “The Pittsburgh product allowed only 26 pressures and four sacks on 699 pass-blocking opportunities, letting up more than two pressures in only three of 18 games (with one being the team’s wild-card loss) compared to six clean sheets. O’Neill ranks ninth among all tackles in wins above replacement over the past two years but is still one of the game’s more underappreciated offensive linemen.”
Overall, O’Neill ranked 16th among all offensive tackles this season, per PFF’s scoring system. He’s one of the steadiest performers on Minnesota’s roster and has been as such for the last eight seasons. In fact, if Harrison Smith and C.J. Ham retire, O’Neill would become the longest-active Viking on the roster.
Former general manager Rick Spielman scooped O’Neill out of the 2018 draft, and before long, O’Neill became a Vikings mainstay on the offensive line and, in fact, one of the few saviors who kept Vikings fans from utter madness regarding the trenches from 2018 to 2021.
With a Pro Bowl (2021) to his name and status as one of the league’s most handsomely paid right tackles, O’Neill is forever ingrained in the fabric of the Mike Zimmer and Kevin O’Connell eras of Vikings football. And he’s scheduled to be a Viking for at least two more seasons.
Of course, O’Neill and the Vikings, on the whole, could use a little help next to him. The club’s interior offensive line floundered on Monday night in a playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams, so much so that O’Connell called it out after the game.
“There’s no question that we got to be able to find a way to give a quarterback time. Especially with players like Jordan Addison, Justin Jefferson, T.J. Hockenson, we got to find a way to solidify the interior of the pocket, starting first and foremost,” O’Connell told reporters after the loss.
O’Connell added, “There can be a thousand excuses made. But, for me, it’s the foundation of the interior of the pocket that we’re going to have to take a long look at.”
Perhaps this offseason will involve bulking up the iOL to accompany the team’s “secret superstar.”
O’Neill’s teammate, Christian Darrisaw, will return at some point in 2025, too.
Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. Subscribe to his daily YouTube Channel, VikesNow. The show features guests, analysis, and opinion on all things related to the purple team, with 4-7 episodes per week. His MIN obsession dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ Basset Hounds, and The Doors (the band). He follows the NBA as closely as the NFL.
All statistics provided by Pro Football Reference / Stathead; all contractual information provided by OverTheCap.com.
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