Are the Vikings hiring a tree or a type? A trend follower or a trendsetter?
NFL hiring practices unfair. But Vikings' Kevin O'Connell will be judged by success or failure
We don't know yet what O'Connell can do as head coach. We do know NFL hiring processes are flawed. We also know this: Winning makes everyone look like a genius.
February 4, 2022 at 2:46PM
In Kevin O'Connell, are they acquiring an excellent coach or someone who is excellence-adjacent?
O'Connell, the Vikings' pick to be their next head coach, is the Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator. This means he is following the deep grooves cut into the path followed by some of the NFL's best young leaders.
The Vikings had better be sure that he is more cause than effect.
O'Connell is 36. He works for Rams head coach Sean McVay, who is 36. McVay's coaching tree is still a sapling, yet his staff has produced his Super Bowl opponent in the Bengals' Zac Taylor, who is 38, and the Vikings' primary antagonizer, the Packers' Matt LaFleur, who is 42.
McVay also hired former St. Thomas assistant Brandon Staley as his defensive coordinator, and Staley, 39, went 9-8 with the Chargers in his first season as an NFL head coach.
After McVay took the Rams to a Super Bowl following the 2018 season, NFL teams began looking for other young coaches like him or, as the popular joke at the time went, had at least had lunch with him.
The joke was based in reality. NFL teams could do a lot worse than hiring people like McVay, LaFleur, Taylor and Staley. In fact, NFL teams usually do a lot worse.
The obvious questions are legitimate. They've also been answered by others.
Is O'Connell too young?
The Super Bowl coaches are 36 and 38.
Is it a mistake to hire someone who isn't solely responsible for the Rams' offensive success, given that McVay is an offensive coach?
LaFleur and Taylor were offensive coaches under McVay.
At 6-5, is O'Connell too tall to be an NFL head coach?
This is about as logical as the previous questions.
O'Connell makes sense for the Vikings. They just hired a 40-year-old general manager in Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. O'Connell and Adofo-Mensah have worked together. By virtue of their ages and relative lack of experience, they will be given a honeymoon and will be allowed to grow together.
They also should be far less cranky and dysfunctional than Rick Spielman and Mike Zimmer were the last two years.
The catch with the O'Connell choice is timing. The day before we learned of the Vikings' decision, Brian Flores, who was fired by the Dolphins last month, brought a class-action lawsuit against the NFL for discriminatory hiring practices. O'Connell is white and has never been a head coach, and the NFL at the moment employs one Black head coach (the Steelers' Mike Tomlin) in a sport in which 70% of the players are Black.
Should the Vikings have hired a Black head coach?
As legitimate as Flores' lawsuit is, and as dire a problem as the NFL's hiring practices are, it's hard to condemn a franchise that just hired a 40-year-old Black man to be its general manager, and that employed the highest-ranking business-side Black executive in the NFL before that in Kevin Warren, now the Big Ten commissioner.
The NFL's problem isn't that too many teams target talented, young, white coaches. The NFL's problem is that teams so often hire nondescript white coaches when there are better qualified Black coaches available.
My real question about the Vikings' hiring process is this: If Jim Harbaugh was a finalist, why wasn't Jim Caldwell even a candidate?
Harbaugh took the 49ers to three consecutive NFC Championship Games and one Super Bowl and hasn't coached in the NFL since 2014.
Caldwell went 9-7 in his last NFL season, 2017. His NFL coaching record is 62-50. He went 36-28 with the Detroit Lions. Grading on the Lions' historical curve, that's just as impressive as going to three consecutive NFC title games.
Throw out 2011, when Caldwell lost Peyton Manning because of a neck injury before the season began and the Colts finished 2-14, and Caldwell's NFL record was 60-36.
Harbaugh was an excellent NFL head coach. Caldwell might have been just as good.
Caldwell should be an NFL head coach. So should Flores.
There is one bulwark against criticism: Winning. Nobody complains about the Patriots hiring a white coach. It's the Jaguars and Giants who look silly.
If Adofo-Mensah and O'Connell prove adept and cohesive, the Vikings will be celebrated as a forward-thinking and intelligent operation.
Mike Conley was in Minneapolis, where he sounded the Gjallarhorn at the Vikings game, on Sunday during the robbery.
