The Vikings plan to hire Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell to be the 10th head coach in the franchise’s 61-year history, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.
A deal with O’Connell cannot be completed until after Los Angeles plays the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl on Feb. 13. But the Vikings on Wednesday night had begun informing the other finalists in their coaching search they would not get the job, sources said.
The Vikings spent most of Wednesday interviewing Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh but never made him a job offer, a source with knowledge of the discussions said. According to multiple news media reports, Harbaugh has informed Michigan he is returning to the school.
The Vikings chose O’Connell, 36, after conducting a second interview in Los Angeles with him on Monday. The Vikings also had second interviews with Rams defensive coordinator Raheem Morris and Giants defensive coordinator Patrick Graham.
O’Connell, a former quarterback, was Washington quarterbacks coach in 2017, Kirk Cousins’ final season as the starter there, and would figure to run a similar system in Minnesota to the one the Vikings first installed with Kevin Stefanski and Gary Kubiak in 2019.
O’Connell also worked with new Vikings General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah in San Francisco in 2016, when the coach was on the 49ers staff doing special projects under Chip Kelly. Sources said Adofo-Mensah held O’Connell in high regard before he got the Vikings job, putting him on a list of coaches the GM wanted to work with, and O’Connell emerged as one of the favorites for the Vikings job as the team started its second round of interviews this week.
The Vikings will bank on the relationship between their 40-year-old general manager and their 36-year-old coach, as they try to refresh an organization that was rife with tension at the end of Mike Zimmer’s and Rick Spielman’s time together. Zimmer and Spielman were not on speaking terms toward the end of the 2021 season, and linebacker Eric Kendricks hinted at a desire for change after the Vikings fired both the coach and the GM on Jan. 10.
“I think just having that voice, no matter how big your role is, is important, to listen up and take each other’s feelings into account,” Kendricks said. “I don’t think a fear-based organization is the way to go.”
Harbaugh was easily the most established of the four coaches the Vikings interviewed in person after hiring Adofo-Mensah last week.
Whispers about Harbaugh’s interest in returning to the NFL surfaced after the Wolverines’ loss to Georgia in the national semifinals last month, and the Vikings had what a source called an “exploratory conversation” with the 58-year-old on Saturday. That led to an interview Wednesday — when college teams finalize their recruiting classes on national signing day.
Harbaugh went 44-19-1 in the regular season in his four years with the 49ers, taking San Francisco to three consecutive NFC Championship Games and one Super Bowl (which he lost to a Ravens team coached by his brother John). He was the coach of the 49ers when Adofo-Mensah began working in San Francisco’s research department.
But Harbaugh was not without risk. After the 2014 season, he was let go after a rift with GM Trent Baalke.
O’Connell was Washington’s offensive coordinator in 2019 and was hired for the same position with Rams in 2020. The Vikings’ search committee came away thrilled about how O’Connell would lead the team, a source said.
He will become the fourth former assistant of Rams head coach Sean McVay to get an NFL head coaching job. Bengals coach Zac Taylor, who will face the Rams in the Super Bowl, was McVay’s quarterbacks coach before Cincinnati hired him. Packers head coach Matt LaFleur had previously been McVay’s offensive coordinator, and Brandon Staley became the Chargers’ head coach last year after working as the Rams’ defensive coordinator.
Morris and Graham figure to stay with their current teams as defensive coordinators. Graham and Morris, who are Black, were the two coaches of color to hold in-person interviews with the Vikings. The team had planned a second interview with 49ers defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans this week, but he withdrew his name from the process.
Graham came to the Twin Cities for a nine-hour in-person interview on Tuesday, the same day former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit alleging systemic racism in the league’s hiring practices for coaches.
All four head coaches to get jobs in the 2022 hiring cycle are white; O’Connell would become the fifth. At the moment, there are only three minority head coaches in the NFL (the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin, the Jets’ Robert Saleh and the Commanders’ Ron Rivera). Adofo-Mensah, who became the first Black man in Vikings history to hold the GM title, is one of six GMs of color in the NFL.
