Vikings HC Kevin O’Connell’s latest interview proves he’s the right guy to develop J.J. McCarthy ‘Organizations fail young quarterbacks’
Organizations fail young quarterbacks.
When you draft a young quarterback, the hope is they will be the future of the franchise. The first step is identifying the quarterback but it’s even harder to develop them. It takes great coaching and development to extract the talent out of the player.
That’s arguably what is the most difficult part of being a coach is the National Football League. Coaches have been fired for not being able to develop a quarterback and i’ts a very difficult task. WIth the success of Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold this year, the why behind a quarterback’s success is coming into focus.
Kevin O’Connell is the right head coach for the Vikings
After a 3-0 start, a lot of the discussion is focused on Darnold. He is currently playing the best football of his career and won the Nickelodeon NVP award for his four touchdown performance against the Houston Texans
Head coach Kevin O’Connell appeared on The Rich Eisen Show on Thursday and was asked about Darnold among other things. After talking about Darnold, he was asked about quarterback development and gave an answer that Vikings fans should be thrilled about.
“Yeah, first and foremost, Rich. I don’t believe that there’s one particular way to do it when to or over a young quarterback. I think you treat each individual day once you once you identify the guy, regardless of of what you may think, everything gets activated when they walk in, you better have a plan. You better have a plan for development. You better have a plan to maximize the time that you get with that player. And it doesn’t always equal sitting, it doesn’t always equal playing from day one, but I feel it’s very important that people have an understanding of this position, the unique intricacies of how you need to play, how you need to respond when you inevitably get punched in the mouth in this league, is the quarterback position. Why it’s the hardest position in all sports is because the entire team experiences your adversity right alongside with you, but it’s also impacted by it, so your ability to respond, your ability to get back to all those little things that you either demonstrated early on you’re ready to do consistently, regardless of circumstance, or over a period of time, where you’re kind of solidifying all those things within you. And no guy comes out of college the same these days, how they see the field, what you’re going to try to teach them from a standpoint of your progressions, and I just think as a whole, there’s not enough emphasis put on the organization’s role in the development of the position. Meaning, I do believe this. I believe that organizations fail young quarterbacks before young quarterbacks fail organizations. And that’s not there’s no specific example in my mind that I could give you of a team or a quarterback just overall 30,000 foot view.
“I think it’s important to understand that every single one of these guys is on a journey, a very difficult journey, that they need the support, they need the teammates around them. They need the systems in place to ultimately try to maximize who they are and what their potential is, because you’re still drafting players rich off of potential. And then everything that happens from that moment to when that potential becomes is really on the organization, if you’ve got the right guy that you’re bringing in. And then in regards to, you know, I do believe there’s some times where things just don’t work out, and then getting a chance to kind of wipe the slate clean and get a restart, while still using your previous experiences to kind of shape you know how you’re going to work, why you’re going to work, why things are important to you, will only make guys better in the end, and I’ve seen some examples of that in our league as well over the last few years.”
What an incredibly thoughtful answer from O’Connell. This line in particular stood out.
“I believe that organizations fail young quarterbacks before young quarterbacks fail organizations.”
O’Connell being able to bring the best out of Darnold this year paired with the success of Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay and Geno Smith in Seattle. Being a former quarterback himself and a quarterbacks coach in Cleveland when Johnny Manziel was in his second season.
The number one thing for developing a young quarterback is to nurture them with a great infrastructure and having a plan. The Vikings have a great one and it’s evident that the Vikings identified the right guy to lead them into the future.
