Kevin O’Connell approaching rarefied air with loss on Sunday

Kevin O’Connell, reigning NFL Coach of the Year and the only Vikings coach to win 13 games in a season twice, now finds himself mired in the mother-goose-egg of all slumps. They head back to U.S. Bank Stadium trying desperately to avoid one of the few, if only, negative regular-season comparisons there are to a Hall of Fame fella named Bud Grant.

In the first 64 seasons of Vikings football, from Met Stadium to the Metrodome to TCF Bank Stadium to U.S. Bank Stadium, a head coach has finished with fewer than two home victories only three times.

K.O., at 1-4 and riding a three-game slide at home, has three cracks at sidestepping his spot as No. 4 alongside Norm Van Brocklin in 1962 (1-5-1), Bud in his 1967 debut season (1-4-2) and Leslie Frazier in 2011 (1-7).

First up for O’Connell’s 4-8 Vikes is Washington (3-9) on Sunday. Lose that one and, oh boy, circle the wagons, K.O.

You’d join Frazier and Denny Green as the only Vikings coaches to lose four straight at home in the same season. Green lost four straight while going 4-4 at home in 1993. Frazier lost five straight in 2011. And O’Connell’s final two home games are potentially very visitor-friendly tilts against the Lions (7-5) on Christmas Day and the Packers (8-3-1) on Jan. 4.

With all this home-cooked gloom and doom brewing, O’Connell was asked if a home game coming a week after the franchise’s first shutout loss in 18 years might present any unexpected challenges. After all, Week 13 did see Philly fans boo their Super Bowl champions, and Steeler fans — the most loyal of all NFL fans — boo their squad and its iconic playing of “Renegade.”

O’Connell said the Vikings don’t prepare for home-crowd discontent and understands the fans’ frustration because the offense is not living up to its standards.

“It’s not lost on me how important our fans are to us and how much they mean to us from an energy standpoint. You want to provide them with reasons to cheer and reasons to be excited about their team. Not always the easiest thing to do when you’re kind of having to transform kind of what you are in your current state of offense.”

Another incentive to play well this Sunday: Keep the boobirds from giving up and selling their remaining tickets to a front-runner-loving Lions fan and a Go-Pack-Go-chanting Cheesehead.

The Vikings have had winning home records 46 times, .500 home records five times and losing home records 13 times. Six of the losing home records came in the team’s first seven seasons.

Coaches Jerry Burns, Green, Mike Tice and Brad Childress never had a losing home record. Les Steckel had one in one season, but even he went 2-6 at home in 1984. Leslie Frazier had one in three seasons, Mike Zimmer one in eight seasons, Grant three in 18 seasons and Van Brocklin five in six seasons.

O’Connell has quite the Jekyll & Hyde relationship with U.S. Bank Stadium, much of it quarterback-related, of course.

O’Connell is trying to stay upbeat.

He talks about the Vikings making the most of their few remaining opportunities and how they’re, “opportunities to take every moment we have sunup to sundown every day to see the fruits of the improvement show up.”

Yeah, yeah, sunup is 7:30 a.m. and sundown 4:30 p.m. in these parts.

But you get the idea.