For several days, it was looking very likely that Jim Harbaugh was in line to be the next head coach of the Minnesota Vikings. While successful, both as a college coach and in the NFL with San Francisco, Harbaugh appeared to be the opposite of what new GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said the team was looking for out of a head coach.
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As it turned out, Harbaugh was back in Ann Arbor after a Wednesday interview with the Vikings to continue coaching Michigan.
WCCO Radio’s Mike Max says that it was clear that the Vikings were down to two solid candidates for the job.
“They obviously knew who they wanted as the number two guy if it fell through, because they offered O’Connell the job about 10 minutes after the Harbaugh stuff broke down,” Max said.
The Vikings then turned to Los Angeles Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell for the head job as WCCO Radio’s Mike Max reported Thursday on the Morning News with Vineeta Sawkar.
“If Harbaugh doesn't work out, boom, we go to O’Connell,” Max explained. “So that that part was easy for them to get through. So they got a young, up and coming offensive coordinator that has never been a head coach.”
Interestingly, the Vikings in team history have never hired a head coach that had previous head coaching experience in the NFL.
What was it that Mensah said they were looking for in a head coach?
“We want leadership,” Adofo-Mensah said. “We want somebody who’s going to value the collective over the individual. We want somebody who’s got vision, who can communicate, who’s got a solid football foundation, who understands how football’s connected and what that means.”
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The issues with Harbaugh according to those who were familiar with his style, is that it was not going to be the collective over the individual. Harbaugh was going to want to control things and by all accounts, it was Harbaugh’s way or no way. There were far too many similarities between the recently fired Mike Zimmer and Jim Harbaugh.
Max says the team had clear interest in Harbaugh but Wednesday’s meetings did not go well. It became obvious during the day that he was not the right fit.
“I'm told that it just fell apart during the day,” says Max. “They were less than impressed with him in the interview, with Harbaugh and the conversations, and they kept thinking that it would take off and it never did. I do think that the Wilfs had a strong interest in him, and I'm told he met with different Viking employees. He met with the key people and it just didn't go well. It became obvious as the day wore on that this was not going to be a fit. They parted ways, maybe technically without an offer, but the templates and everything else were in place.”
You certainly couldn’t overlook Harbaugh’s pedigree, success and interest in returning to the NFL. The fact that he crossed over in San Francisco with Adofo-Mensah and had that relationship was likely intriguing for the Vikings.
Ultimately, they decided to go in a different direction with O’Connell who is 22 years younger than Harbaugh and at 36-years old will match his soon-to-be former boss Sean McVay as the league’s youngest head coach. The pairing of O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah (who is 40-years old) gives the Vikings one of the league’s youngest football brain trusts.
“He looks like the kind of prototypical guy that would work his way up as a coach in the NFL and now he's getting his big opportunity,” explains Max.
O’Connell comes to Minnesota with a lot of experience on the offensive side of the ball, the opposite of Mike Zimmer.
He is a former quarterback who played collegiately at San Diego State. He was drafted by the Patriots and bounced around the league for four seasons without playing much. O’Connell then got into coaching, with stints in Cleveland, San Francisco (where he worked with Adofo-Mensah), and Washington where he spent a season as Kirk Cousins’ QB coach.
Max dismisses the connection with Cousins because it is likely to be a short tenure for the Viking QB.
“It doesn't hurt, but this coach is more for the long term and Kirk's time with the Vikings is probably short term.”
O’Connell then joined up with Sean McVay as the offensive coordinator in Los Angeles. Now the Rams are on the way to the Super Bowl next week, and after that O’Connell will head to Minnesota as the new Viking Head Coach.
“If the Rams win a Super Bowl Viking nation will get all excited about it,” Max told Vineeta Sawkar. “We got the Ram’s offensive coordinator coming here pretty soon!”
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