Analysis: Kevin O‘Connell’s Vikings show resilience in racking up more one-score wins

Kevin O’Connell won his 30th career game as a NFL head coach on Sunday afternoon, reaching the milestone faster than any coach in Vikings history and celebrating the victory in a manner that’s by now become familiar.

The coach praised his players’ resilience in his locker room speech after the Vikings overcame a 13-point deficit in the final 16 minutes to beat the Cardinals 23-22, saying he hadn’t once wondered whether they believed they could emerge with a victory. He acknowledged the Vikings’ imperfections, challenging them to keep chasing an ever-improving standard of play, and he gave out game balls to the players who’d produced the pivotal moments in the game.

“Got our 10th win by December 1st, which I think is an accomplishment,” O’Connell said in his Sunday news conference. “Games are hard to win. I do think that’s a really well-coached, playoff-caliber football team in the other locker room. They made it hard on us. We’ve got to be a lot better offensively and see if we can not put ourselves in a hole. But I will say, you know, when we absolutely needed it, to put those drives together and find a way to get the points needed to win the game is obviously the intent of everything here.”

O’Connell reached the 30-win mark in 46 games, two faster than Dennis Green and four faster than Bud Grant. That mark is built on the Vikings’ success in close games: they are 24-9 in one-score games under O’Connell, with a .727 win percentage that trails only the Eagles and Chiefs in that time, and their 7-1 mark this year is the second-best in the league behind only Kansas City’s 9-0 record. According to ESPN Stats and Information, O’Connell‘s record in one-score games is the third-best in league history, behind only Guy Chamberlin and John Madden.

The frequency of the Vikings’ close games has become something of a gripe among fans, perhaps because of the stress they induce. This year, as in 2022, they’re frequently used in service of the narrative the Vikings are an illegitimate contender, with a florid record dressed up by narrow victories.

Indeed, the Vikings resisted the urge to run it back after 2022, letting go of veterans like Adam Thielen, Dalvin Cook, Eric Kendricks and Za’Darius Smith after a season where a 13-4 record (despite the fact they’d been outscored) might have convinced them to return with the same group. They continued to remake the roster after 2023, and it’s entirely possible they’ll continue to do so after 2024, with a number of veterans on one-year contracts driving them toward a playoff berth that few saw coming.

But in the two years where they have paired O’Connell with consistent quarterbacking, they have found a way to succeed in a league where close games are more prevalent than ever.

The frequency of close games in the NFL has been ticking up for years, spurred on by the relatively even distribution of talent and rules that facilitate the kinds of passing games that can catalyze comebacks. With one game to go in Week 13 of the 2024 season, 106 of the 194 games have been decided by seven points or less, putting the league on pace for 148 in a 272-game season. That would break the record of 139, set in 2022. (It’s worth noting that the 2022 and 2023 seasons, which both had teams playing 17 games, rank atop the list, but the eight seasons with the most close games in NFL history have all occurred since 2010.)

Compared to previous Vikings coaches, O’Connell has certainly coached an outsize portion of close games. Thirty-three of his 46 regular-season games, or 71.7%, have been decided by one score. That’s easily the highest percentage in Vikings history, ahead of Green (53.4%), Leslie Frazier (51.8%), Brad Childress (50%), Mike Zimmer (49.6%), Grant (48.2%), Mike Tice (47.6%), Les Steckel (43.8%), Jerry Burns (43.1%) and Norm Van Brocklin (31%).

After losing three games by 17 points or more in 2022, though, the Vikings have played more close games in part because they haven’t been blown out much. They lost just once by three scores in 2023, and their two losses this season are by a total of 12 points. As a result, they have outscored opponents by 78 points this season, tied with the Packers for the fifth-best mark in the league.

“The margin of victory tells some story about your team,” O’Connell said. “But I do know that if you stack a whole bunch of one-score wins together, and you don’t have any lopsided losses, your margin of victory is going to be at a good number for the season, and that means you played somewhat consistent.”

The coach said he doesn’t think all one-score games “are created equally,” bringing up the differences between a five-point victory over the Jaguars where the Vikings held the ball for 42:19 and their 13-point comeback to beat the Cardinals by a point on Sunday.

Against Arizona, though, Darnold delivered a performance that evoked Kirk Cousins’ work in the Vikings’ eight comeback wins two years ago. In engineering the biggest comeback of his career and just his fifth fourth-quarter comeback in the NFL, Darnold completed seven of his 12 passes for 104 yards and a touchdown in the fourth quarter. A week before, he‘d thrown for 90 yards on the Vikings’ game-winning overtime drive against the Bears.

”I don’t know how many times he’s had a game where he’s been down 10 or 13 points and been able to manifest that kind of scoring,” O’Connell said. “It’s almost a surgical level of doing [his] job and trying not to do too much, but also knowing, ‘My job might be to put a ball in a tight window here and there.’ … When you stack them all up, it’s winning football.”

Whether with Cousins (who returns to U.S. Bank Stadium with Atlanta on Sunday) or with Darnold, the Vikings continue to stack up one-score wins under O’Connell faster than at any point in their history.

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