Four months have passed since the hiring of Minnesota Vikings new head coach Kevin O’Connell. The 10th head coach in Vikings franchise history is already making changes to the approach the team is taking going into thee 2022 season.
O’Connell Impresses Jefferson
It is really only a month into OTA’s and the Vikings players have seemed to love the mindset of Coach O’Connell and the systems being put into place for their offense. The most open and opinionated on the subject is Vikings standout Wide Receiver, Justin Jefferson.
Under a run-heavy offense, Jefferson still put up unimaginable numbers. The LSU alum has a career statline of: 3016 receiving yards, 196 receptions, and 17 touchdowns. This was done in an offensive scheme that focused mainly on the run/play action. Now imagine what getting the ball thrown to him more often would foresee.
Jefferson sat down with NFL Network’s Patrick Claybon and discussed what O’Connell is bringing to the table with the new season less than three months away from kicking off.
“Our offensive style, it’s not a run-first offense anymore,” Jefferson told Claybon. “I’m so excited in this offense. Us just being in OTAs, learning the plays, going through it with our defense, and stuff.”
Now these words should be taken very seriously by not only Vikings fans, but people of the football world. It is always easy to be in the puppy love stage when a new coach is hired, but the hopes are high for their new coach, coming off a super bowl win in February.
If O’Connell has the backing of the future of the program, being Jefferson, there are plenty of other guys who feel that way in their locker room.
How will this effect Kirk Cousins?
One aspect to consider is how will Jefferson’s counterpart, Quarterback Kirk Cousins react with this style of play? O’Connell and Cousins have the history together knowing that O’Connell was his Quarterback coach in Cousins’ final season with Washington, back in 2017. Plenty of things have changed since then, but there is reason to believe that the chemistry can still be there and that this offense can look a lot different from years past, under former coach, Mike Zimmer.
Cousins will definitely have growing pains with this offense, but who is to say that this could be exactly what he wanted. Last season he actually contributed much more to the team than most would like to admit. Putting up numbers such as 4221 passing yards, 33 touchdowns, and only seven interceptions. He was ninth in the league in passing yards last year, and even yielded less interceptions than guys such as Justin Herbert, Josh Allen or even Patrick Mahomes.
All things considered, those guys are gun-slingers and are more prone to throwing picks due to the difficulty of throws. Cousins will have to be challenged like these guys to see if his numbers stay consistent or if he wavers off and starts putting up 12-15 interceptions in a season.
In Conclusion:
Overall, O’Connell will be bringing some Los Angeles Rams type schemes into Minneapolis. Ultimately, that means more Jefferson, more Cousins, and not exactly less Dalvin Cook. It has been made apparent already that O’Connell wants to stretch Cook’s game to make him even more viable for the team.
According to The Athletic’s Chad Graff, the Vikings routinely placed Cook in the wideout position during the first week of OTA’s. Cook has shown flashes of hope as a receiving back at times during his career, but again this role will challenge him to be an even better version of himself.
Dalvin Cook has never seen more than 63 targets (53 receptions) in any season of his career.
With an emphasis on the passing game, this new coaching staff could easily get him to 70-75 targets with potential for more. pic.twitter.com/OOru5bVkgY
— TheOGfantasyfootball (@TheOGfantasy) June 27, 2022
The biggest conclusion through one month of OTA’s is the Vikings needed change. They got that with O’Connell. There is still plenty of time until we see this Vikings offense hit the field, but if Jefferson is already excited about it, many others should be too.