A day after flying to Cleveland for a second interview with the Browns for their head coaching position, Kevin Stefanski returned to Minnesota to accept the job he missed out on a year ago.
Stefanski will be the Vikings' permanent offensive coordinator in 2019, the team announced, after the Browns chose offensive coordinator Freddie Kitchens as their next head coach. Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, sources said, had offered the permanent job to Stefanski last week, before his contract expired Tuesday, and Stefanski was waiting to see how things played out between him and the Browns before accepting.
Stefanski, 36, was the interim offensive coordinator for the final three games of the season, after the team fired John DeFilippo on Dec. 11. He has been with the Vikings since 2006 and is the longest-tenured assistant coach on the team's staff. He first interviewed for the Vikings' coordinator position last year, and was thought to be the favorite until the team hired DeFilippo.
After doing so, the Vikings blocked Stefanski from joining Pat Shurmur in New York and becoming the Giants' offensive coordinator, keeping him as their quarterbacks coach before promoting him in the wake of DeFilippo's dismissal.
The Vikings ran for 220 yards in a 41-17 victory over the Dolphins in Stefanski's first game as a play-caller, but got off to slow starts in a 27-9 Dec. 23 victory in Detroit and a 24-10 Dec. 30 loss to the Bears that cost them a playoff spot. In his postseason news conference Jan. 3, Zimmer praised the job Stefanski had done in DeFilippo's stead.
"I thought he did a good job for the three weeks that we were in a tough situation that we had to do," Zimmer said. "It's fair to the organization, to myself, to the fans, that we look at everybody."
Vikings players spoke highly of Stefanski and the work he'd done to simplify the team's offense in the final weeks of the season. Now that Stefanski permanently has the job, it bears watching how he shapes the offense, in light of the mandate from Zimmer to run the ball more frequently that ultimately exposed the philosophical rift between him and DeFilippo.
He will also be tasked with overseeing the Vikings' ongoing efforts to rework an offensive line that made things difficult for them on offense once again in 2018. And Stefanski will return for a second year with quarterback Kirk Cousins, whose relationship with the former quarterbacks coach was thought to be one of the reasons Stefanski would stay on in 2019.
