Kevin O’Connell, Vikings head coach and noted quarterback aficionado, has a good handle on what and who he wants, should his team be in the right position to pull the trigger come draft night April 25.
The who will have to wait. As for the what, well, he wants …
Accuracy. Toughness, both mentally and physically. A fast mind that instantly can process what the defense is giving, and the arm strength and/or athleticism to occasionally “change the game” by taking from the defense something that wasn’t there for the taking.
It all sounds so good. And yet we all know there are no guarantees. Teams working 24/7/365 with unlimited resources to unearth every last piece of information haven’t been and never will be immune to wasting great picks on bad quarterbacks who become remembered forever as infamously awful whiffs.
Why in the world is that?
“The quarterback position is one where you may have 10 really smart coaches or personnel folks watch the same cutup, and you might come away with 10 different opinions on the player,” O’Connell said.
For what it’s worth, O’Connell insists the Vikings have “a lot of really smart people” working under him and General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. The difficult process toward a teamwide consensus on the QB possibilities has been, according to O’Connell, “really good.”
Last week, Adofo-Mensah said that O’Connell has been a “big driver” of the process and that his QB experience brought “great value” to a franchise that’s trying to package the 11th and 23rd picks – and possibly more – to move up and select a quarterback in the top 10 for the first time in the 64 drafts in which it has participated.