A year ago, before the sailed passes, anonymous reports, and alleged soft benchings, Kevin O’Connell was on top of the world. He successfully led Sam Darnold’s revival during a 14-win season with the Minnesota Vikings, won the NFL’s Coach of the Year award, and secured a contract extension.
O’Connell’s resumé predated Darnold’s performance. He got more out of Kirk Cousins than any other coach. He MacGruber’d Joshua Dobbs and Nick Mullens to a seven-win season. When Rich Eisen asked him how he had done it, O’Connell had a simple philosophy.
“I believe organizations fail young quarterbacks,” O’Connell said, “before young quarterbacks fail organizations.”
Those words, which might as well be emblazoned at TCO Performance Center, have helped O’Connell succeed. But one year later, they’ve come under fire. J.J. McCarthy, the highest-drafted quarterback in Vikings history, is struggling at a historic level. As a result, fans are upset about everything from O’Connell’s play-calling to McCarthy’s alter ego.
Through all the internet noise, it may be hard to determine who is at fault for McCarthy’s struggles. But Max Brosmer is taking first-year reps with McCarthy in concussion protocol on Monday. Whether he succeeds or fails could reveal whether the Vikings have become an organization that fails young quarterbacks.
Anyone who has followed O’Connell’s origin story could understand. The New England Patriots took O’Connell in the third round out of San Diego State. They released him after two years, and the New York Jets later cut him twice. After a brief foray into broadcasting, O’Connell got into coaching and plied his trade under Sean McVay with the Los Angeles Rams.
That apprenticeship got O’Connell a Super Bowl ring and a job in Minnesota, but it also gave him a world of experience. McVay had tried to develop his own quarterback in former No. 1-overall pick Jared Goff. However, Goff’s deficiencies were too much to overcome, leading the Los Angeles Rams to trade for Matthew Stafford, who led them to a Super Bowl.
Of course, the weeks leading up to that trade late in the 2020 season have a lot of parallels to what O’Connell is facing now. Was McVay doing enough to help his young quarterback? Did the Rams build a strong enough infrastructure to compete for a championship? Is Goff as bad as it seemed?
The answers were a mixed bag. Stafford came in and immediately led the Rams to a championship while Goff took some time to find his footing with the Detroit Lions. Goff has yet to reach the Super Bowl with the Lions, but they’ve been a legitimate contender in the past several years, providing a redemption arc for his new team.
Examining the Vikings raises several questions that need to be addressed. McCarthy isn’t just failing as the starting quarterback; he’s doing it at a historic level.
Anthony Amico’s X post, which Danny Heifetz of The Ringer researched, noted that McCarthy ranks 851st out of 852 qualified passers in expected points added per dropback (EPA) per Tru Media. Arif Hasan also noted that, eliminating dropbacks with quick pressures, McCarthy’s EPA per dropback ranked 344th, and his 26.7% success rate ranked 331st among 346 quarterback performances this season.
McCarthy won a national championship at Michigan and led the Big Ten in 2023 with a 72.3% completion rate and 9.79 air yards per attempt. Therefore, it’s easy to wonder what went wrong, which triggers an audit of O’Connell’s development plan.
The tendency to throw on third downs and the reluctance to run the ball in general have been one glaring issue. Still, you could poke holes in O’Connell’s process dating back to when Kwesi Adofo-Mensah hatched his “competitive rebuild plan” in 2022. Meager draft classes over the past three years robbed the Vikings of affordable, controllable talent. Instead of supplementing their roster in free agency, Minnesota went into a full-fledged spending spree to make up for their young quarterback.
It also could be that O’Connell overestimated the progress of his young quarterbacks. McCarthy’s OTAs and training camp practices were filled with highs and lows, but it never seemed to reach the crisis stage until he returned from his high-ankle sprain. It led to the Vikings stacking McCarthy’s plate like a Thanksgiving feast, asking him to take control of a 14-win team with Super Bowl aspirations.
Ultimately, McCarthy is the one throwing the football and making the decisions. That would make it easier to move on to the next quarterback instead of telling O’Connell to hang up his whistle. But there’s also something to be said for how things have been handled this offseason.
That, of course, puts the ball in Brosmer’s court. An UDFA out of Minnesota, fans have had to wait to see O’Connell’s passion project take the field. Positive reviews about his processing speed and ability to push the ball downfield have made him an underground revolution. Still, he may be doomed regardless of whether O’Connell is making mistakes.
If Max Brosmer succeeds, it could mean the end for McCarthy, who is having dirt poured on his grave by a Bobcat after Sunday’s loss to the Green Bay Packers. If Brosmer struggles, it requires further examination whether O’Connell is doing the right things to cultivate a young quarterback.
That could all be moot if McCarthy recovers in time for Sunday’s game against Darnold and the Seattle Seahawks. But it could also provide the clarity Vikings fans need when the quarterback position is clouded in uncertainty.