Kevin O’Connell Earns High Marks in ESPN Ranking
The NFL is a bit notorious for its coaching carousel on an annual basis.
Constantly, we see teams bring in coaches for a couple years before they are back out the door after underwhelming seasons.
The Minnesota Vikings certainly have had their ups and downs in recent years, but Kevin O’Connell, more often than not, has proven that he is one of the better head coaches in the NFL.
On Thursday, ESPN’s Bill Barnwell ranked each of the NFL’s head coaching hires over the past five years, and Kevin O’Connell earned high marks, landing within the top ten.
Kevin O’Connell Earns High Marks from ESPN
Over the past five years from 2021-2025, there have been 37 head coaching hires in the NFL.
Of all those hires, Barnwell placed O’Connell at No. 7 on his list. The Vikings head coach was sandwiched between Sean Payton (traded for by the Denver Broncos in 2023, made the AFC Championship Game this year) at No. 6 and Ben Johnson (hired in 2025 and led the Chicago Bears to an NFC North title in his first year) at No. 8.
O’Connell took over a Vikings team in 2022 that seemed to be barely treading water after back-to-back sub-.500 seasons in 2020 and 2021. A main culprit of those poor seasons was disastrous defensive play, but there were also concerns surrounding Kirk Cousins at quarterback.
However, in 2022 during O’Connell’s first season, Cousins’ play improved dramatically, and he seemed to step up to the plate in big moments (other than the end of the Wild Card loss to the Giants). With Ed Donatell’s defense being one of the worst in the NFL, that change on offense, O’Connell’s forte, was the reason behind Minnesota’s 13-4 record and NFC North title.
Regardless of the talent at the quarterback position, O’Connell has found ways to at least make the Vikings a competitive team in each of his first four years as head coach. Barnwell pointed to that success as a main reason behind his high ranking.
“O’Connell deserves credit for what he has done in building offenses around everyone from Kirk Cousins to Joshua Dobbs to Sam Darnold over that time frame,” Barnwell wrote.
However, there is still some doubt around O’Connell heading into 2026. Barnwell pointed to Minnesota’s outlier record in one-possession games as a reason to believe the head coach’s 43-25 record should be scrutinized.
“There’s no doubting that O’Connell is a good coach, having put together 13- and 14-win seasons over his first four years in Minnesota, but we can poke a few holes in that record. One is the Vikings’ performance in close games. They are 25-12 in one-score games over that span, and while O’Connell does a solid job of managing late-game scenarios, the wild fluctuations in their record in those games from year to year suggest their record in close games is more a product of randomness than a sustainable skill.”
Ultimately, the Vikings should not be in a position to be considering moving on from O’Connell at this point, but his fate may end up being tied to how J.J. McCarthy progresses in 2026.
After losing his entire rookie season to injury, McCarthy came into 2025 with high expectations, and while he certainly had moments that left Vikings fans excited for more, there were equally as many moments that left fans pulling out their hair.
For O’Connell’s position to be fully secure moving forward, the Vikings will need to get back into playoff contention in 2026, and McCarthy will need to be a reason for that success.
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