The Minnesota Vikings struggled to pass the ball for the first time under Kevin O’Connell last year. After going 14-3 with Sam Darnold, the Vikings believed their strong infrastructure could help carry J.J. McCarthy in his first season as a starter.
Instead, the Vikings missed the playoffs, starting 4-8 and all but eliminating them from postseason contention before December.
However, Minnesota closed the season with a five-game winning streak to avoid a losing record. They took advantage of a three-game stretch against beatable opponents: the Washington Commanders, Dallas Cowboys, and New York Giants.
McCarthy played better in these three games. He completed 65.6% of his passes with five touchdowns and an interception. He also had a rushing touchdown during that span.
A GOAL LINE GRIDDY FROM J.J. McCARTHY. 🕺 pic.twitter.com/2WW2DGornz
— Sunday Night Football on NBC (@SNFonNBC) December 15, 2025
Those numbers were an improvement on his season-long stats. In 10 starts, McCarthy completed 57.6% of his passes for 11 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.
Skeptics pointed to the poor defenses deployed. Dallas (+0.13) and Washington (+0.10) yielded the worst EPA (expected points added) per play this season. The Giants weren’t much better, tying for 24th in the metric (+0.03).
However, the Vikings played a different style of football down the stretch. They passed on less than half of their offensive plays against those three opponents, and again in Week 17 in their 23-10 victory over the Detroit Lions on Christmas Day.
Of course, playing with a lead can influence this. Not being forced to desperately attempt to throw and gain chunks of yardage leads to a more well-balanced approach.
But it may have signaled a philosophical change. Kevin O’Connell spoke with team play-by-play announcer Paul Allen on 9 to Noon this week, and he said the season’s struggles forced Minnesota to play a different brand of football later in the year.
I think the ultra lesson we learned this year was, in addition to winning differently than maybe we’ve won in the past, really leaning on our defense, trying to run the football, not turn it over, play smart football. We went from 4-8 to 9-8, learning some of those lessons.
But I think what we learned about each other, the culture that’s been built in our building, we weren’t, there was no participation trophy, P.A. There was no, “Hey, you actually did sneak into the playoffs because you’ve won five in a row to end the season.’”There was a lot of work that was done without any reward.
The season stung in many ways. It had to have bothered O’Connell, who entered the year as the “quarterback whisperer.” Not only did McCarthy not play up to Darnold’s level from a year before, but the passing game ranked 29th in the league.
Even after losing Kirk Cousins to an Achilles tear eight games into the 2023 season, Minnesota still finished that season ranked fifth in passing yards.
Darnold’s success in Seattle this year only poured more salt in the wound. But would that success have hurt as badly as if the Vikings were able to show more consistency in the passing game earlier in the year?
Kevin O’Connell had to shift from a pass-first scheme to a run-first scheme over the final month of the year. That wasn’t only to help take pressure off McCarthy. It was also to improve their record. Even though the team was likely out of the playoffs, the difference between a 4-13 finish where the team has given up and a 9-8 season can influence who will be returning to coach the following year.
That he got the team to buy in, even when stars like Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, and T.J. Hockenson publicly admitted they didn’t like the idea of trimming down the offense, showed that O’Connell can be adaptable. Obviously, it’d be more ideal not to wait until the team is in a 4-8 hole to do that.
But will O’Connell use a more well-balanced approach moving forward, whether or not McCarthy is at quarterback? We try to project player improvement, but we sometimes are less open to the idea of a coach improving.
Legendary coach Bill Walsh, the creator of the West Coast Offense, also learned things the hard way.
One pivotal mistake came when he was the offensive coordinator for the Cincinnati Bengals. In a 1975 playoff game against the Oakland Raiders, the fans near the press box where he was coaching were throwing stuff and becoming so rambunctious that Walsh lost his nerve. The environment and pressure of the moment affected Walsh’s playcalling, and he admitted to “choking”.
That failure, which prevented the Bengals from winning the AFC Championship, led to one of the most significant innovations in football. Walsh then created “The Script,” which has become synonymous with the first 10 to 15 offensive play calls in a game.
In his mind, not being prepared for every possible outcome affected Walsh’s judgment. But the sting of his failure spearheaded an innovation that changed the game of football, and helped influence Walsh’s approach when he was hired as the San Francisco 49ers’ head coach in 1979.
The 49ers won three Super Bowls in Walsh’s 10 seasons with the team. Would they have found that success had Walsh not suffered his failure in the 1975 playoff game and gained the awareness not to allow those circumstances to crush him again?
Walsh likened his approach to those crucial moments to “flying by the seat of my pants.” He vowed, “Never again,” he vowed, “will that happen to me.”
Attempting to run a more balanced offensive attack won’t be an offensive innovation if Kevin O’Connell so chooses to continue the approach that helped the Vikings close the season with five wins. But emphasizing its importance in the offseason and into the regular season would make the ground game a counterpunch rather than We have to do this because my passing attack failed us this year.
The Vikings also seem to be already taking the Never again will that happen to us approach to the quarterback position. Signing Darnold to a multi-year deal may not have been the team’s priority in 2025, but they failed to secure a reliable veteran to push McCarthy during the offseason. That created an environment where they had to get McCarthy up to speed because there were no other options.
On Friday, Adam Schefter reported that the Vikings are likely to bring back Carson Wentz in 2026, but they will also likely bring in someone else. Minnesota has been linked to almost every potentially available quarterback this offseason, including but not limited to Kirk Cousins, Anthony Richardson, and Kyler Murray.
Carson Wentz is expected to be back with the #Vikings in 2026, per @AdamSchefter. Despite this, Minnesota is also expected to add another QB as well.
“I expect him to be back in Minnesota, but there'll be another guy.” pic.twitter.com/9dhGb54xOM
— VikingzFanPage (@vikingzfanpage) February 28, 2026
The aggressiveness shows that they don’t want a repeat of last year, when they didn’t bring in much competition for McCarthy in camp. McCarthy then missed five games, replaced by Wentz, who was then lost for the season with a shoulder injury. That meant the Vikings had no quality backup plan when McCarthy struggled from Weeks 9 through 13.
If Minnesota is prioritizing competition in camp, hopefully that means they also lean into the offensive approach. Instead of counting on whichever quarterback wins the starting job to immediately elevate them back to a top-10 passing attack, will they try to operate an offense that is closer to a 50/50 split, even if it isn’t quite to the extreme of the late 2025 season?
Ideally, McCarthy fends off competition and grows in Year 3, showing more physical and mental maturity. However, he needs Kevin O’Connell, a bright young mind, to continue the balanced approach that helped Minnesota’s late-season surge in 2025.
O’Connell knows the 9-8 finish wasn’t enough to get the team to the playoffs. And he knows that some fans may be frustrated that they won “meaningless games.” But O’Connell told Allen that he believes those games can have a tangible impact moving forward.
I think we can use [the win streak] moving forward. I’m sure fans are going to sit there and say, “Hey, we didn’t get anything out of that,” but I promise you we’re going to use that for when we inevitably get to where we want to get to.
And that’s part of what makes this job fun, is you’re constantly recalibrating, you’re reassessing. But you’re using this experience to apply layers of depth to your team. And I’m not just talking about depth charts. I’m talking about who we are as a team and the fabric of our ability to go attack this thing moving forward together. And I’m excited about it.
The Vikings are seeking improved quarterback play, specifically from McCarthy in 2026. But that play could be elevated if O’Connell implements lessons learned from the tumultuous 2025 season.
He may not have wanted to have to pivot from his core offensive philosophy, but he did, and it helped the Vikings win their final five games. Will Kevin O’Connell see that as a winning formula when the games matter to start next season?