The great connector: How Kevin O’Connell’s struggle made him the NFL’s rising quarterback whisperer

https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/article/the-great-connector-how-kevin-oconnells-struggle-made-him-the-nfls-rising-quarterback-whisperer-172741080.html

EAGAN, Minn. — Deep into an August interview, Kevin O’Connell was reading the formation in front of him.

Not the typical football Xs and Os that he grinds in his office, but the mechanics of how a journalistic narrative has been built around his NFL coaching success. He’s compiled a 34-17 regular-season record in his first three seasons as head coach of the Minnesota Vikings. His impressive success with quarterbacks over the course of his career has been thoroughly catalogued. And as an offensive mind and leader of a franchise, he’s earned praise and admiration across the league.

Now he was reclined on a couch next to his desk in the second week of training camp, once again tracing over the lines of how his quarterbacking career fizzled out after only one season as a New England Patriots third-round draft pick, followed by a stint as a New York Jets third-stringer that lasted long enough for coaches to stop talking about his future as a player and start talking about his horizon as an NFL coach.

O’Connell has heard and repeatedly been invited by reporters to revisit this fragment of his football history. At times, he’s leaned into it because there is merit to that chapter always being present in his coaching DNA. But he’s also adamant that there’s more that has brought him to this moment.

“I appreciate like a depthful [consideration] because a lot of people want to tie in the failure of my playing career into now,” O’Connell said. “But there’s so much in between that has been touch points for me to get to the place now, that allows me to feel comfortable being authentically myself every day.”

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In most scenarios, someone talking about their authentic self might smack of inauthenticity. But when it comes to O’Connell, there’s a sizable ripple of individuals who have come in contact with him over the years who begin by telling you that one of his biggest strengths — a characteristic that immediately presents itself — is that he can authentically connect.

“I’m not at all surprised what a great job he’s done establishing a culture, being a play-caller, leading people, getting people to want to f****** follow his lead,” Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay said. “He’s a special leader. He’s a real dude. I swear to you — I mean this — like if you said, OK, you’re an owner and you have a draft pick of every head coach in the league, he’s coming off the board top three or four for me.”

“He’s got swag,” Rams general manager Les Snead echoed. “It’s not an arrogance, but an edge of confidence. It just oozes out of him.”

And players, Snead noted, gravitate toward it. Especially quarterbacks.

Head coach Kevin O’Connell’s next QB project is the tutelage of J.J. McCarthy, whose rookie season in 2024 got wiped out due to a knee injury. (Photo by Bailey Hillesheim/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

(Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

This is how you end up having the head coaching launch O’Connell has experienced with the Vikings. His three-year run has seen him stack multiple quarterback coaching wins onto his résumé. Among them: seizing an injury-shortened window with Kirk Cousins that produced some of Cousins’ best football, pumping life into backup/spot starter Josh Dobbs, resurrecting the career of Sam Darnold, drawing raves of admiration from Matthew Stafford and Aaron Rodgers, and even winning over Caleb Williams before the 2024 NFL Draft — to the point that Williams reportedly hoped to somehow land with the Vikings.

O’Connell also worked with Jared Goff during the quarterback’s difficult final season with the Rams and was the reason Daniel Jones signed with the Vikings for the remainder of the 2024 season once he was released by the New York Giants. That latter development — Jones choosing the Vikings over other suitors — resonates loudly because it showcases a trend of quarterbacks gravitating to O’Connell and believing in his ability to either turn their careers in the right direction or raise the ceiling on the accomplishments they’ve already grasped.

As Jones said of O’Connell when he signed with the Vikings last season, “His system’s been successful. He knows quarterback play [and] knows how to build the quarterback environment.”

How the ‘quarterback whisperer’ label got attached to Kevin O’Connell

That’s the kind of belief — along with the realized results of Darnold’s 2024 turnaround — that had Fox Sports NFL analyst Greg Olsen labeling O’Connell a “quarterback whisperer” during a broadcast, introducing an unofficial title that has stuck for many across the league. By January, even Peyton Manning, who didn’t have a lengthy personal relationship with O’Connell, was shouting him out as the NFL coach he’d like to play for. It was a declaration Manning made largely by watching how O’Connell coached his players and schemed his offense.

Even in his injury-shortened time with J.J. McCarthy, there’s an underlying belief that the second-year quarterback is already starting to show growth that is going to present another phase of O’Connell’s mastery of getting the best out of his QBs. Interestingly, when the Carolina Panthers traded veteran wideout Adam Thielen to the Vikings last week, the deal unfolded with a belief inside the Panthers’ organization that the Vikings were acquiring Thielen because McCarthy was ahead of schedule and ready to hit the ground running in his first season as a starter.

By the time Yahoo Sports began putting together a collection of 25 Game Changers to watch in 2025 and beyond, O’Connell was the most prominent offensive coach appearing on lists offered by front-office executives, coaches, agents and other various NFL sources.

“If I’ve got a talented quarterback with problems, I’d try to get him to O’Connell any way I can,” one prominent NFL agent told Yahoo Sports after nominating O’Connell as a 2025 game changer. “[Kyle] Shanahan or McVay are probably more popular in terms of their longer reputations, but they have also had some deep doghouses when they’ve run out of patience. I think O’Connell doesn’t get enough credit for how well he’s handled some quarterbacks who have driven other coaches [crazy].”

One of those quarterbacks was Johnny Manziel, whom O’Connell first tutored as a private quarterbacks coach, and then again when he was the quarterbacks coach of the Cleveland Browns for one season in 2015. Ultimately, O’Connell’s efforts — like many others around Manziel — ended in failure. But not without earning some admiration.

“Other than [Manziel’s] agent, nobody worked that hard and with that level of belief and support to get Manziel going in his career [in 2015],” a former Browns personnel executive told Yahoo Sports. “He did everything he could to get him closer together with Josh McCown — to just be a pro and on the details. It just never worked. But [getting him closer with McCown] was the right intent.”

That inability to reach and redirect Manziel’s career might be one of the few instances that O’Connell’s ability to connect has failed with a quarterback. Those stories are almost nonexistent across the board, whether it’s focused on players, fellow coaches or even executives. One NFL personnel man — who asked not to be identified out of deference for his own head coach — recalled once watching O’Connell navigate an offseason meeting with mixed personnel from another NFL team, many of whom he’d never met before. The personnel man marveled at O’Connell’s ability to instantaneously blend into a group and then seemingly become the head of that group.

“He’s disarming,” the executive said. “[The time I watched him talk] was over a matter of hours. You know, when he walks in the room, it’s just he lights it up. You know obviously it’s real, too. He’s a good-looking dude. He’s tall, and he just commands a room. He’s so easy, so conversational. He always has a plan. He’s smart. He’s detailed. Suddenly, everyone around him is involved in a conversation — with him. He is just leading it.”

‘Imagine graduating college, getting the greatest job in the world, and then getting fired from that job a year later’

That’s the swag that Snead refers to. The edge of confidence that oozes. And it’s the authenticity and ability to connect that McVay raves about, having coached with O’Connell on his Rams staff in 2020 and 2021, and winning a Super Bowl with Stafford together. Indeed, McVay was so taken by O’Connell’s ability as a coach that he teased a multiverse-eque set of events that might have unfolded after that Super Bowl victory.

Speaking to Yahoo Sports in the summer of 2023, McVay said there was a brief window after the Los Angeles win in Super Bowl LVI that two things were suddenly in play: First, McVay knew he’d be contemplating a massive broadcasting offer from Amazon and his possible departure from the Rams; and second, because O’Connell’s hiring by the Vikings had not yet been finalized with a contract signing, if McVay made a quick decision to leave the Rams for Amazon, O’Connell was one of the coaches McVay was going to strongly suggest to ownership as his successor.

Asked again by Yahoo Sports this summer if he would have pushed O’Connell as his potential Rams replacement in February of 2022, McVay replied simply, “Absolutely.”

GREEN BAY, WISCONSIN - NOVEMBER 28: Head coach Sean McVay of the Los Angeles Rams speaks with offensive coordinator Kevin O'Connell prior to a game against the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field on November 28, 2021 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers defeated the Rams 36-28. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images) — Head coach Sean McVay (left) and coordinator Kevin O’Connell made for a strong offensive brain trust that helped lead the Rams to a Super Bowl title in the 2021 season. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

(Stacy Revere via Getty Images)

Of course, that never happened. O’Connell departed the Rams for the Vikings and the rest is history. Or perhaps it’s more accurately described as the middle of O’Connell’s football history unfolding.

O’Connell’s NFL journey began with his selection by the Patriots in the third round of the 2008 NFL Draft, with a large part of his support coming from then-offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels and then-personnel executive Scott Pioli. Those two individuals left the Patriots one year later for their own promotions — McDaniels as head coach of the Denver Broncos and Pioli as the general manager of the Kansas City Chiefs — removing two of O’Connell’s biggest advocates. That helped grease his release from the franchise after only one season.

It wasn’t simply the departure of McDaniels and Pioli that left O’Connell in a lurch. He struggled to meet the staff’s expectations with accuracy and decision-making, with some internally blaming McDaniels for having worked out O’Connell prior to the draft and not flagging concerns more significantly. And when O’Connell got his best chance to make an impression prior to his second year, he flopped in a preseason game against Washington, completing only three passes and throwing two interceptions.

That led to an eyebrow-raising release and then a wavier claim by the Detroit Lions, who then flipped O’Connell to the New York Jets for a seventh-round draft pick, a deal that was fueled by the Jets’ hopes that O’Connell could spill insights about the 2009 iteration of New England’s offense. O’Connell obliged, and then ultimately went much further in his endeavors, spending three years as New York’s third-string quarterback. He also was one of the Jets’ best minds at analyzing opposing offenses during game weeks, in which he isolated vulnerabilities for a defensive staff that would then use the information to mold game plans.

It was on those Jets teams that O’Connell would become a useful tool for defensive coordinator Mike Pettine, who even today likes to tell a story about how the quarterback once helped create a pass-rushing package that resulted in a sack of Tom Brady in a game against the Patriots. Eventually, Pettine would become a head coach of the Browns — and in 2015, he opened the door to his quarterbacks coach job to O’Connell, who had been working as a private quarterbacks coach following his departure from the NFL as a player after the 2012 preseason.

Looking back at it, these are some of the “depthful” collection of touchpoint that O’Connell refers to when it comes to his head coaching success. Yes, he slammed into a wall in New England, a setback that later helped guide him in what kind of head coach he would have liked to have when he was at his lowest point with the Patriots. But his ensuing experience with the Jets also laid a significant portion of foundation, teaching O’Connell that sometimes the NFL is about finding solutions and being useful.

Later, a core building memory would be made in joining Pettine’s staff with the Browns in 2015, only to have the entire outfit fired at the end of the season. O’Connell moved on to the San Francisco 49ers and toiled on special projects for their offensive staff in 2016. There, he crossed paths with his current Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, who was San Francisco’s manager of research and development. Next, he moved on to Washington in 2017 as the quarterbacks coach of Kirk Cousins, who was in his final season with the franchise. O’Connell ascended the ranks to Washington’s offensive coordinator spot in 2019 and then wasn’t retained, which opened his path to the Rams in 2020.

All of these stops molded O’Connell’s approach with his quarterbacks — and in general, all of his players — as a head coach. It’s an approach that embraces staying positive (or at rock bottom, industrious and problem solving) and being empathetic in trying to understand a player’s struggles from inside their shoes because he remembers it from inside his own.

“Imagine graduating college, getting the greatest job in the world, and then getting fired from that job a year later,” O’Connell said. “That journey in itself for a 22-year-old kid can be so wildly impactful, where you’re supposed to just figure it out. That level of ‘figured-outness,’ I like to say, is a trait that is acquired. You better understand the big picture and start learning about what life is all about when those things happen to you.”

“That’s the No. 1 thing that I remember vividly — conversations where somebody could have just said, ‘We’re going to go in a different direction and wish you the best of luck’,” O’Connell said. “But I remember coach [Bill] Belichick’s conversation with me, or [Patriots owner] Robert Kraft calling me that evening after I got waived. I remember my conversations with Rex Ryan when my time with the Jets kind of ended there. I remember even coaching my first year of coaching, we get fired in Cleveland. I’m barely a year into this career. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I should have done something different. But the experience of being 22 years old and fired for the first time, it was just another day at the office. What’s next? Let’s go.”

His success as a coach isn’t as much linked to his failure as a player or any wrong turns along the way. It’s tied to how he responded in all of those situations — what he pressed himself into and how he became useful.

“I’m a positive person and like to make sure I’m leaving people — once they have an interaction with me — I’m leaving them better than they were when I first found them,” O’Connell said. “That’s not a narcissistic way of saying I make everybody’s day better, but it’s purposeful. It’s an intentional thing for me, but it also has to be genuine. And that’s probably been the best thing about becoming a head coach. Because the two things I care about most are being authentic, authentically myself and then maintaining, no matter the circumstance, that no matter the result, that feel of how others are going to receive the words that I have to say in my actions.”

https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/article/the-great-connector-how-kevin-oconnells-struggle-made-him-the-nfls-rising-quarterback-whisperer-172741080.html