INDIANAPOLIS — If you walk around to different podiums and listen to NFL coaches speak to the media about their teams’ offseasons, you are likely to hear a lot about culture.
That’s because talking about culture is a good way to spend time talking about anything else other than upcoming decisions, draft philosophies, scheme changes etc. But in Kevin O’Connell’s case on Wednesday, he was able to beam about the Vikings’ culture after an NFL Players Association survey showed proof that he made good on the cultural promises he made at the last NFL Combine.
The survey of more than 1,300 players that looked at numerous aspects of an organization — from facilities to treatment of families to training staff — gave the Vikings the highest grade of any team in the NFL.
“To provide the premier place to go to work and improve both personally and collectively as a team in our league means a lot to us,” O’Connell said.
Certainly the facilities would have gotten an A+ last year but it’s hard to imagine they would have ranked No. 1 in other areas before hiring O’Connell and GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, particularly with a different attitude toward players and increased focus on sports science in the training room.
“The Wilfs and the resources they give us to bring in the people, like [exectuive director of player health and performance] Tyler Williams,” O’Connell said. “That was somebody that was as important as anybody for me to bring to this organization… I didn’t know there was going to be a survey, it didn’t matter to me, but I knew what that would look like with Tyler, Kwesi and myself and how we build things.”
The Vikings left the Zimmer-Spielman era in desperate need of improved morale. Linebacker Eric Kendricks referred to a “fear-based” culture in a conference call after the former HC and GM were let go and players acknowledged meeting with ownership in which they asked for improvements in the overall environment.
In terms of the things that were different in 2022, the most noticeable were the approach to camp and preseason workloads, managing injuries and how players who were recovering from injuries were talked about publicly and the buy-in to quarterback Kirk Cousins. Players cited the tight-knit nature of the locker room and their confidence during late-game situations as a result of the building’s updated vibes under O’Connell.
“Wanting to make those guys feel like their coach cares about them, both the person and the player, and their future, it’s real,” O’Connell said. “It’s not always easy to maintain that, but I will never change from that because I just believe that’s the way you’re supposed to operate.”
While the survey is the ultimate feather in O’Connell’s cap in terms of retaining players on long-term contracts and signing free agents, he’s aware that not everyone is going to be able to return and the team doesn’t have oodles of cap space to spend this offseason.
So how will he balance the desire to maximize the benefits of the culture, keep the players who helped him implement it and improve on last season while dealing with the facts of life in a salary cap league?
The answer: Understanding the situation.
“The more I can educate myself, learning about the details and particulars of our current situation, our previous situation, and obviously what it looks like moving forward, the more my conversations can be not only from an accurate place of where we are at this moment but where we hope to get to,” O’Connell said.
The Vikings’ head coach compared all of the moving parts to puzzle pieces but it’s more like a choose-your-own-adventure book because each choice with Player X impacts Player Y and the combination of all of the decisions takes you to a different endpoint. And none of the endings feature everyone who was around last year. It’s just not possible when sitting $24 million over the cap (per OverTheCap.com) to bring all the veterans back.
“You do hope it was a perfect world where you can have everybody and have everybody finish their careers where they should and feel great about it, but it’s just so hard to do and still build for the future the way the rules are set up,” O’Connell said. “I’ve spent a lot of time with Rob [Brzezinski] and Kwesi [Adofo-Mensah], and we’ll continue to do that in anticipation of being at a certain place by the league year like we need to be and then, ‘How do we go forward building it from there?’”
Right. How do you go forward building it from here?
There are a few fundamental things that will influence decisions, starting with whether Cousins signs an extension.
A significant part of the positive culture was O’Connell and Cousins working together in lockstep. They were together in Washington and grew their connection this season as the veteran QB led eight game-winning drives, won the division for the first time since arriving in Minnesota and put together one of his best games in the playoffs vs. the Giants.
“My main goal was just to connect with him and build on a relationship that I thought was strong already. And it’s even stronger now,” O’Connell said.
Similarly to his GM one day earlier, the Vikings’ head coach couldn’t make a strong statement about what the future would hold at QB. He called conversations “ongoing” about Cousins’s future.
“This time of year tends to be a difficult time when you’re talking about players’ futures and how they affect the greater picture of our team, and those conversations are ongoing,” he said.
Quarterbacks are never far from O’Connell’s mind. He noted that he’s always going to evaluate all the quarterbacks out of “habit” and that he finds himself often looking at evaluations from years past, even when someone is coming available who came out in the draft a long time ago. In other words, he’s going to look in the store window at this year’s draft class because he always does, whether he is shopping or not.
“There’s a reason I feel so strongly about Kirk…. I believe in him as a player and was really proud of the way he played this year but we always have to be evaluating,” he said. “Maybe it’s not even for any one particular year.”
Aside from the quarterback situation — which is like talking about building a house and saying “other than the ground it stands on” — the Vikings will also consider the wants/needs/system of Brian Flores as they look for improvement on defense.
“I think the priority first and foremost is giving him time to evaluate our roster with our young players and some of our veteran players and see how pieces may fit,” O’Connell said. “As we use the process of free agency and the draft to really take a look at how to evolve and fit what we want to do.”
No cards were shown when O’Connell was asked about Flores and the cornerback position as it pertains to the draft but it would appear that Flores will be looking for players with flexibility, whether that’s in terms of position or skill set.
“Sometimes how you have to reinvent yourself week in and week out,” O’Connell said. “Sometimes how you have to mold and adapt how you play while still staying true to your football philosophy at its core and it’s not always easy to do, but he’s demonstrated that he’s been very successful doing it time and time again.”
O’Connell did note that safety Lewis Cine was ahead of schedule in his rehab from a severe leg injury suffered in London last season and that Cine has been at TCO Performance Center making regular stop-ins to his office.
“Really excited about Lewis and his mental growth through how he handled the adversity of that injury,” O’Connell said.
At the end of the day Wednesday, the Vikings’ head coach left the building with one of the easier media sessions you’ll ever run across in the NFL. His team won 13 games and the NFLPA just said his team’s culture was the best in the league. Heck, it was even over 70 degrees outside. But there was a sobering line of questioning from a New York reporter pertaining to Giants head coach Brian Daboll. While O’Connell answered gracefully about his colleague, it was a reminder that they didn’t finish the year with a deep playoff run.
“It’s still something I think about often,” O’Connell said of the loss to the Giants.
He later reiterated his own self reflection following the season, saying there were “a lot of phases” looking at everything from how game-management and play-calling tie together to how they handle all the aspects of player’s schedules to the scheme.
One thing he knows is that no matter how many A’s he got in a survey or wins he posted as a first-year coach, that doesn’t mean they can do it all again the same way and get the same results.
“None of that means anything for what we do moving forward if we don’t grow and evolve and change in a good capacity,” O’Connell said.
