Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell returns to LA to face Sean McVay

Most Saturday nights before a Vikings home game, the last lit office at the TCO Performance Center in Eagan is the one overlooking the third-floor practice fields.

The final hours before kick-off are a lonely moment for Kevin O’Connell to put the finishing touches on the call sheet that will remain in his hands for three hours on Sunday. He begins setup Friday afternoon after his press conference and broadcast production meetings, sitting down with assistant quarterbacks coach Grant Udinski and asking his offensive staff for input on the game plan. On Friday nights, he eats dinner with his wife, Leah, and their four children and plays with his children in the basement “until I can’t move anymore,” he said.

Then, after a walk-through meeting Saturday with Sam Darnold and the rest of the Vikings quarterbacks, O’Connell’s favorite pastime is watching a college football game on the television in his office and going over his call sheet until he gets the Team meets at the hotel. Right tackle Brian O’Neill, who lives near the Vikings’ Eagan headquarters, will drive by the team parking lot, see another car there and text O’Connell: “Go home.”

“Or [Saturday] He’ll call in the morning and say, ‘What time was it yesterday?'” O’Connell said. “I say, ‘It was only six o’clock,’ and he says, ‘Dude.'” I say, “I promise you, man, if I could.” [leave earlier]I would.’ I always tell the players that I will give them everything I have. It’s time to turn it off in the offseason, but not now.”

This week he put it all together before flying 1,500 miles to return to the field at SoFi Stadium, which he last left covered in confetti. There he will use the methods he learned in Los Angeles to try to beat the head coach who taught him many of them.

The Vikings’ game against the Rams on Thursday night is a homecoming for O’Connell, a San Diego native whose two years as Sean McVay’s offensive coordinator made him the Vikings’ head coach immediately after the Rams’ win over the Bengals in Super Bowl LVI. He is the third of McVay’s former offensive assistants (after Matt LaFleur and Zac Taylor) to become an NFL head coach, and in 40 regular season games, O’Connell has the highest winning percentage (.625) in Vikings history.

His hasty entry into coaching in 2019 under interim Washington coach Bill Callahan was good for him, O’Connell said, “because he didn’t have a lot of time to think about it.” But with McVay, O’Connell learned many of the same Know the principles of game planning that he still uses.

He was McVay’s first offensive coordinator since LaFleur in 2017, and although McVay called the plays, O’Connell was his confidant, from game-planning meetings with quarterbacks to game-day support. McVay assigned play calls to O’Connell during practices and preseason games, leaving his door open for discussions to prepare O’Connell for his own head coaching opportunity.