I bet you can guess who
We’re at the point of the offseason when a lot of sites are putting together lists of all sorts as we gear up for the new NFL season. Lists are fun, or they can be, and they give us something to talk about. One list that we came across recently has what we can only deem as a pretty hilarious omission.
Pro Football Focus has put together their list of the top ten head returning coaches in the NFL as we head into the 2025 season. Here’s the list.
- Andy Reid, Kansas City
- Sean Payton, Denver
- Sean McVay, Los Angeles Rams
- John Harbaugh, Baltimore
- Mike Tomlin, Pittsburgh
- Jim Harbaugh, Los Angeles Chargers
- Kyle Shanahan, San Francisco
- Nick Sirianni, Philadelphia
- Dan Campbell, Detroit
- Kevin Stefanski, Cleveland
So. . .you notice anybody missing? Because I sure do.
Yes, apparently Minnesota Vikings’ head coach Kevin O’Connell, who was voted as having done the best coaching job in the NFL last season, is not one of the NFL’s ten best returning head coaches.
All O’Connell has done since taking over as the head coach of the Vikings is win two-thirds of the games he’s coached in, became the first coach in Vikings history to have at least two seasons of thirteen wins or more, turned Sam Darnold into a $30 million+ a year quarterback, and pulled off the “competitive rebuild” that all of the Really Smart Football People™ poo-pooed when GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah suggested that such a thing was possible.
Yes, yes, he hasn’t won a playoff game yet, blah blah, whatever. If you’ll recall it took Dennis Green six seasons before he finally won a playoff game. Turned out he was still a pretty damn good head coach. Given what’s been expected of the team in each of his three years as head coach, you could make a pretty solid argument that nobody has exceeded expectations more than Kevin O’Connell has.
Looking at some of the names on this list, it appears it could be more of a lifetime achievement award than a list of the best coaches in the league right now. Still, I don’t see a coach on that list I’d trade O’Connell straight-up for at this point, and I’ve got a funny feeling that after this coming season lists like these won’t be able to ignore him any longer.