The Minnesota Vikings, as foreshadowed by head coach Kevin O'Connell after January's playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams, overhauled the interior of their offensive line this offseason. Center Ryan Kelly and right guard Will Fries were signed in free agency, and first-round pick Donovan Jackson is in line to start immediately at left guard.
The attention on those moves might make it easy to set aside the enviable stability the Vikings have found at both tackle spots. Right tackle Brian O'Neill has started 106 games over the last seven seasons, and left tackle Christian Darrisaw has been among Pro Football Focus' 12 highest-graded offensive tackles in each of the last three seasons.
Darrisaw's status for Week 1 is naturally up in the air as he works his way back from a torn ACL and MCL, but he absolutely belongs in the top tier of offensive tackles in the league.
ESPN ranking confirms Minnesota Vikings have one of the best OT tandems in the NFL
ESPN is doing it's annual position rankings, surveying league executives, coaches, and scouts to shape the final results. Darrisaw was No. 6 in last year's offensive tackle rankings, but fueled by his injury status, and individual rankings ranging from No. 5 to unranked, he fell to No. 9 this year.
"Darrisaw's severe knee injury is the primary issue with his standing on the list, as he's recovering from a torn ACL and MCL. In minicamp, Darrisaw conducted individual drills but hadn't graduated to 11-man work. The Vikings will take it slowly with him, and plenty of evaluators still see him as elite."
An veteran offensive coach had a concise evaluation of the Vikings' left tackle.
"He's got it all," a veteran NFL offensive coach said. "He has power, good feet, balance and range."
As Fowler noted at the end of Darrisaw's evaluation, the Vikings wasted little time extending him past his rookie contract as he entered his fourth season.
"Despite the injury costing him 10 games, Darrisaw produced an 88.9 pass block win rate on 197 snaps along with a 79.7 run block win rate. The Vikings gave him a four-year, $104 million extension before last season."
If he'd had enough snaps to qualify, Darrisaw's run block win rate would've been top-10 among offensive tackles last year. His pass block win rate would have been just outside the top-20.
O'Neill is coming off a Pro Bowl season in 2024, but he continues to be underappreciated on a national scale. He had the third-best pass block win rate among offensive tackles (94.5 percent) last season, and he did that on the highest number of appropriate plays among (at least) the top-20 offensive tackles in pass block win rate (457). Yet he only led the "others receiving votes" category in ESPN's rankings, a notch below the six offensive tackles listed as honorable mentions.
This side of Philadelphia, and maybe Detroit or Los Angeles (Chargers), there's a strong argument that the Vikings have the best offensive tackle tandem in the NFL. It'd be nice if O'Neill got more appropriate acknowledgement, but as the Vikings' young quarterback recently said about something else, "people who know, 'know.'
