Because why wouldn’t they?
The NFL preseason has officially gotten underway, and that means we’re almost out of list-a-mania season. But there’s one last set of rankings we want to highlight because, well, it’s pretty good for the Minnesota Vikings.
Ben Solak of ESPN has racked and stacked all 32 of the coaching staffs around the league, and the group that leads our favorite football team picked up their #1 ranking.
Here’s what he had to say about the Minnesota coaching staff:
When I ranked the Vikings in this exercise last season, I sang the praises of Flores, the defensive coordinator who had done the most with the least in 2023. But I wondered if O’Connell, another branch off the Shanahan-McVay tree, could innovate and evolve beyond the tried-and-true system he had run with Kirk Cousins to that point. What could he offer a younger quarterback in need of development?
The answer: a whole lot! Not necessarily to the quarterback we expected, as Sam Darnold started the entire season in J.J. McCarthy’s absence — but what a season it was. O’Connell’s mastery is in opening intermediate and downfield passing windows. Darnold had more passing attempts at least 10 yards downfield than any other quarterback, and NFL Next Gen Stats charted those targets with an average separation of 2.7 yards — fifth highest in the league.
O’Connell has easily leaped into that utmost echelon of offensive designers, and Flores remains the cream of the defensive crop. There are always little things to wonder about — scheming for a rookie is different from scheming for a veteran, even if that veteran had never been successful elsewhere — but there is no doubt that O’Connell & Co. elevate players more than any other coaching staff in football.
O’Connell really has become one of the top coaches in the NFL in a very short period of time, and his being named the league’s Coach of the Year this past season is a reflection of that. There are very few coaches around the league that I would swap Kevin O’Connell for at this point, to be honest. Yes, he hasn’t won a playoff game yet, but that’s not something that can be entirely laid at his feet. He’ll get there eventually. Honestly, I’d be surprised if he was still oh-fer in the playoff win column after this season.
Solak did not think as highly of the Vikings’ NFC North rivals. The next-highest team in the division is the Green Bay Packers, who check in at #10. The Detroit Lions come in at #11, as they will no longer have Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn propping up Dan Campbell like the guy from Weekend at Bernie’s, and the Chicago Bears’ new coaching staff ranks 22nd.
The best coaching staff in the National Football League, according to ESPN, resides in Minnesota. Do you agree?