The Minnesota Vikings are getting close to their first preseason game, and then, it will be time for the regular 2025-26 season to start. With less than two months to go until the Vikings play their first game of the regular season, it’s an exciting time for those in Minnesota.
The Vikings have a lot going for them this season, and they have a healthy franchise quarterbacks again in J.J. McCarthy. It will be great to finally see him play in the setting of the NFL, and hopefully he brings it.
But, enough about the players. Let’s look at the coaching staff for the Vikings. Now, ESPN has released its tally of the best coaching staffs in the NFL. In the feature, Ben Solak breaks down all of the NFL team’s staffs and ranks them from best to worst. So, where do the Vikings land?
Minnesota Vikings Head Coach Gets Big Props
While there’s lots of talk about the best players in the NFL leading up to the 2025-26 season, and rightly so, sometimes, it’s easy to overlook that there are other factors to a team’s success. One of the biggest measures of how well a team is going to do during the season, for any sport, is their coaching staff. From the head coach down to the coordinators and their staff, having a solid coaching staff is so critical to making sure a team thrives.
GettyHead coach Kevin O’Connell of the Minnesota Vikings throws the ball prior to the NFC Wild Card Playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams at State Farm Stadium on January 13, 2025 in Glendale, Arizona.
With that in mind, check this out. Solak ranks Minnesota Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell and his coaching staff as the No. 1 best in the NFL. That’s amazing.
“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,” Solak notes. “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.”
So, even with Darnold stepping in during a difficult time last season, it says a lot that O’Connell got such a great performance out of him. That helped earn him the No. 1 spot.
PFF Names the Best Coaches in the NFL
You know what’s weird? PFF doesn’t even rank O’Connell in their top 10 of the best NFL head coaches. How crazy is that? They have Chiefs head coach Andy Reid as No. 1, which makes sense, but still. Reid does have the stats to show he’s one of the best, but there’s no reason to leave the Vikings off this tally.
“Like Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots teams before them, the Kansas City Chiefs are the masters of situational football,” Dalton Wasserman says in the piece, published on June 24. “The Chiefs played in 12 one-score games last season, including the playoffs, and won all of them. They found a way to reach the Super Bowl for the third straight season because Andy Reid has his entire team prepared for any situation.”
He adds, “The Chiefs ranked 17th in PFF offensive grade during the first three quarters of games but slotted into fourth in that same category in the fourth quarter and overtime. They simply find ways to step up their game despite their flaws, injuries and lack of explosiveness. That’s a testament to Reid’s levelheaded approach to the game and wealth of experience.”
Vikings Get Massive Boost Going Into New Season