Months before the Minnesota Vikings won 14 of their first 16 games of the ongoing season, individuals such as John Breech of CBS Sports predicted that Minnesota would finish Week 18 in the basement of the NFC North standings.
Ahead of the upcoming “Sunday Night Football” game between Minnesota and the 14-2 Detroit Lions that will determine the No. 1 seed for the NFC playoffs, Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell revealed during an appearance on the “Pro Football Talk Live” program that he realized his club could be a Super Bowl LIX contender “during the ramp-up period the first couple days” of training camp.
“We were very calculated and who we brought to this team, the type of player, the type of mentality they would have, we wanted to really bring guys here that were smart, tough, loved football, loved being great teammates because of what we built here,” O’Connell told PFT’s Mike Florio.
O’Connell previously didn’t hide
that he was annoyed with how the Atlanta Falcons and former Minnesota starting quarterback Kirk Cousins came to a contract agreement early into free agency last March. The Vikings responded by signing journeyman Sam Darnold to a one-year deal, and he has flourished under O’Connell as J.J. McCarthy has spent his rookie season recovering from a complete meniscus repair.
According to Pro Football Reference, Darnold is ranked fourth in the NFL with 4,153 passing yards, fifth with 35 touchdown passes and fifth with a 106.4 passer rating this season. Some around the league believe the Vikings will retain Darnold’s rights for next season via the franchise tag so they can play him over McCarthy through at least January 2026.
“I do believe those players tend to thrive and we get enough of those guys in that locker room with the leadership and the players we already had in it,” O’Connell added about the squad the Vikings built last offseason. “I thought it would be very much possible for us to have success and then if we built it the right way in that darkness when there was no light shining on this team at all I think those teams can be dangerous when they’re forged in kind of the background and you just keep on preparing, keep on growing. And now we get an opportunity to play on the big stage, in the bright lights of ‘Sunday Night Football’ to finish the season.”
As of Wednesday morning, DraftKings Sportsbook listed the Vikings as 2.5-point underdogs for the prime-time matchup at Detroit’s Ford Field. One may want to think twice about betting against O’Connell and Co. even though Minnesota suffered a 31-29 home loss to the Lions on Oct. 20.
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