With the Minnesota Vikings holding a 14-2 record, they could secure the No. 1 seed in the NFC on Sunday Night Football against the Detroit Lions. With tame expectations coming into 2024, Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell had one moment during the offseason where he knew they could contend for a Super Bowl, as mentioned during his interview with PFT Live on Tuesday morning.
“I think it might have been during the ramp-up period the first couple days,” he said. “I remember standing with Harrison Smith, you know it was about his hundredth training camp, so he’s standing off to the side and him and I are kind of watching maybe a special teams period going on and I remember saying to him, ‘I think we got a chance to be pretty good, what do you think?’ and he kind of looked at me and said, ‘You know I totally agree. I think we’ve got everything we need right here and let’s see how training camp goes.’
“My message from day one was for us to truly reach our potential regardless of — in this day and age it’s impossible to not hear, ‘Hey, win projections and expectations and this team and that team’ and he was really talking about us and probably rightly so with our division being what it is and ended up being this year with how well Detroit is playing and Green Bay has had a fantastic year as well.
“Didn’t expect a whole lot of people to kind of put us in that group, maybe at the beginning of the year, but I thought it might be possible if we just got better, things came together. 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.
“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. 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.”
Now, something O’Connell said in this is one of the more compelling arguments made, and there’s evidence within the Vikings’ division on why building in the darkness could be the way to do it.
Vikings HC Kevin O’Connell details reason behind upcoming Super Bowl run
The Chicago Bears— a team full of offseason hype— come into Week 18 with pride as their only reward for winning.
On the other hand, the Vikings— a team that some slapped the ‘rebuilding’ tag on during the offseason— are battling for the No. 1 seed in the NFC and a first-round bye in the playoffs.
As mentioned by O’Connell in his interview, a major key to this success was building their team intentionally and, somewhat, in the dark. Having extremely high expectations going into a season can actually be more of a hindrance than it is helpful.
On the flip side, when a team has lower expectations and blows those out of the water, the team seemingly plays better because of it.
In a way, the low pre-season expectations put a chip on the Vikings’ shoulders.
Even after rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy suffered a season-ending injury in the preseason, the Vikings are set up for a possible Super Bowl run, especially considering their chances of getting the No. 1 seed.
For a team that many expected to be a non-factor in the 2024 regular season, O’Connell has done an incredible job leading this team.
Though the season isn’t over, O’Connell has been picturing this moment since training camp. Now, all they need to do is continue playing top-level football. If they do that, the Vikings could be a serious contender come February.
