How Kevin O’Connell guided QB Josh Dobbs, Vikings to an unlikely victory

EAGAN, Minn. — During his brief tenure as an NFL quarterback, Kevin O’Connell was consumed by the big picture. He worried his career could hinge on every practice throw, every decision he made and every word he said to coaches. O’Connell said recently he should have tattooed a reminder on his arm to stay in the moment.

That realization helped guide the Minnesota Vikings head coach through the most improbable win of the NFL season Sunday in Atlanta. The Vikings scored 31 points, including a game-winning touchdown with 22 seconds remaining, with a quarterback they had acquired five days before, one who hadn’t received a single practice snap and didn’t know most of the names of his new teammates.

Joshua Dobbs is the story of the week in the NFL, but fairy tales don’t happen on their own. Those three hours at Mercedes-Benz Stadium cemented O’Connell as among the most accomplished members of the 2022 coaching class.

The Vikings have won 18 of 26 regular-season games under O’Connell, the sixth-best winning percentage (.692) in the NFL over that period. His best work might have come in the past month, as the team reversed an 0-3 start by winning four of its next five while navigating injuries to his top three quarterbacks as well as receiver Justin Jefferson. At 5-4, the Vikings are squarely in the NFC playoff race as they prepare to face the New Orleans Saints on Sunday (1 p.m. ET, Fox) with Dobbs getting his first Vikings start.

“I did not think about any of that in the moment,” O’Connell said this week. “I can promise you that. … My job in that moment is to eliminate the chaos. It is going to be a very chaotic situation, no matter how you want it to go. So, my job in that moment is to provide as much clarity for not only our players but our staff.”

When rookie quarterback Jaren Hall suffered a first-quarter concussion in Atlanta, it left Dobbs as the only healthy quarterback in uniform. Dobbs, acquired at the trade deadline after Kirk Cousins was lost for the season due to a right Achilles tear, had started eight games for the Arizona Cardinals, going 1-7. O’Connell said he fought the urge to panic when Hall went down, admitting it would have been a “natural reaction.” But the Vikings’ sideline remained relatively calm and went to work.

The offensive line gathered around Dobbs to hear what his cadence sounded like for the first time. O’Connell spoke briefly with Dobbs and let him know that he would help guide Dobbs through pre-snap alignment and reads via his headset, much like one of his mentors — Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay — has done for young and/or inexperienced quarterbacks with great success.

“People may not always say it and he won’t say it about himself,” offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said. “But Kevin O’Connell did one heck of a job during that game. A situation like that is not easy.”

NFL rules allow coaches to speak to quarterbacks on offense, and a pre-designated player on defense, until 15 seconds remain on the play clock. O’Connell went to great lengths to maximize his time with Dobbs, shifting into no-huddle mode that allowed him to speak without talking over communication in the huddle while also optimizing his own time to see the Falcons’ defensive alignment and make recommendations.

“It was great that Kevin played quarterback,” Dobbs said. “He obviously knows what I’m going through, so he’s able to communicate effectively like, ‘Hey, this what you’re looking at. This is what you have on this side of the [field]. This is what you have on that side of the [field].’ He’s able to talk in lingos that I come from to be able to simplify it for me.”

Brian O’Neill told us about the mini-huddle the offense had on the sideline to hear Josh Dobbs’ cadences for the first time. Here’s the @kare11 video of that moment.

pic.twitter.com/rQRbaFowxl

— Kevin Seifert (@SeifertESPN) November 6, 2023

During the game-winning drive — which lasted 11 plays, 75 yards and was aided by a 22-yard scramble to convert a fourth-and-7 — O’Connell said he was giving Dobbs specific instructions and tips, including: “What was going to be on his left, what was going to be on his right, the last-minute reminder: don’t forget about your legs. We still had a timeout left, make sure he put his eyes on the catch and tuck the nickel. All these things were very high-level.”

O’Connell said he had picked up what to do from previous stops.

“I’ve kind of learned from those experiences,” O’Connell said. “You’ll never be perfect, as far as what’s the right amount of information to clearly articulate what you want to say in 7-8 seconds, while also not overloading the player and forcing them to kind of freeze in the moment. I started to get a pretty good feel just through the dialogue, some of the TV timeouts, some of my dialogue with Josh on the sideline, I started to get a pretty good feel with where he was at and his ability to know formations and kind of the intent of certain plays allowed me to get a little bit deeper into the footwork and what to do with this eyes and what I was thinking as the playcaller.”

As Rams offensive coordinator in 2021, O’Connell found himself on the head coaching interview circuit in part because of his association with McVay, who personified the preferred NFL coaching profile of a young offensive playcaller who took the Rams to the Super Bowl LVI championship. The league’s head coaching ranks include four former McVay assistants, and for a time it was difficult to differentiate O’Connell, now 38, from the rest.

Like McVay, O’Connell tapped himself as the Vikings’ playcaller and has experienced the expected success. Since the start of the 2022 season, the Vikings rank No. 10 in offensive efficiency, all while elevating Jefferson and Cousins to new heights. But O’Connell has proved to be more than an effective offensive mind, according to players and outside observers who know him.

Upon his arrival in Minnesota, O’Connell developed a logo and phrase to represent the impact he wanted to have on the organization. The final product was a circle he called the “Culture Shield,” and it was emblazoned with these words: “Our Way, Our Process, Our Team.”

The rollout might have seemed corny in the modern era of pro sports, but players — especially those who have played in other NFL cities — refer to it often. It focuses around O’Connell’s relentlessly optimistic attitude, one that former receiver Adam Thielen found so jarring last season that he wondered: “Is he not going to rip us?”

The answer was no.

“When I got here it was all very welcoming,” said offensive lineman David Quessenberry, who had played for three other teams before signing with the Vikings on Aug. 30. “People are eager and happy to be here and to have you here. They sit you down and say, ‘These are our goals. This is what we’re doing.’ Kevin tells you that it’s ‘our process and our way.’ It’s like nothing I’ve ever been around. You just feel it and you want to be here.”

Quessenberry cited details that range from the extent of the team’s nutrition plan to the thought that goes into warmups before practice. Running back Alexander Mattison said O’Connell’s focus on certain core values — including a goal to be “situational masters” who understand how to approach every moment in a game — provides a crutch for when “the going gets rough.”

In naming the Vikings the league’s best organization for players for last spring, the NFL Players Association wrote that O’Connell “is regarded as one of the most player-friendly head coaches.” In short, O’Connell and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah have made players feel comfortable. That tends to be a bad word in the alpha world of pro football, but it seemed to pay off Sunday in Atlanta. Dobbs, after all, wasn’t the only player who stepped with confidence into an unexpected situation.

Receivers Brandon Powell and Trishton Jackson moved up on the depth chart following K.J. Osborn‘s mid-game concussion; Jackson caught a key two-point conversion in the third quarter and Powell snatched the winning touchdown pass with 22 seconds remaining. Quessenberry found out Sunday morning that he would start for an injured Christian Darrisaw at left tackle, and went on to be part of an offensive line that limited the Falcons to a 14.8% pressure rate, third-lowest in the NFL in Week 9.

Former New York Jets general manager Mike Tannenbaum, who acquired O’Connell as a backup quarterback in 2009 and also cut him twice from their roster, said he recommending O’Connell as a head coaching candidate to several teams before the Vikings hired him.

“Minnesota has a superstar for the next 20 years,” Tannenbaum said. “They’re lucky to have him. He’s only going to get better and better. I think he has a chance to be really special. People will say he’s a McVay guy with a really good scheme. Kevin has a million more attributes to add to a program than scheme. He has relatability. He is a good listener. He has a really good demeanor.”

O’Connell’s personal approach hasn’t worked in every situation. He struggled last season, for instance, to nudge veteran defensive coordinator Ed Donatell to adjust his scheme amid a disastrous stretch of performances and fired him after the season. And there is plenty of improvement to be made when it comes to situational mastery. Since the start of 2022, the Vikings have the NFL’s worst point differential in the middle eight minutes of games (minus-73), the key portion of games before and after halftime.

No coach is perfect, but O’Connell has remained focused and affable throughout. That is, of course, until Powell’s touchdown Sunday afternoon. When the catch was secured, O’Connell let loose with a series of arm thrusts and leg kicks, his 6-foot-5 frame flailing wildly, before he spiked his headset into the turf.

He joked afterwards he might have strained a muscle in his neck, and noted that he sheepishly retrieved the equipment and wore it for the remaining 22 seconds of the game.

“I just feel like my role and my job is to lead,” he said. “It’s not always just scheme. It’s not always just drawing stuff up on a whiteboard. It’s in those moments when you’ve got to show up for the guys the way you ask them to show up. You better be doing it yourself.”