Time for Kevin O'Connell, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah to get to work for Vikings — and quickly

The Vikings executives, franchise luminaries, agents, camera crews, reporters and family members filed out of the team's indoor practice facility late Thursday afternoon, disassembling from a news conference the team billed as the start of a new era.

The event introducing new coach Kevin O'Connell came just past the midpoint of the 66-day span between the Vikings' final 2021 game and the start of the 2022 league year, when the team will need its priorities set and salary cap spiffed up for the beginning of free agency.

By next week, O'Connell could add more than a half-dozen assistants to his coaching staff; he still needs an offensive coordinator and special teams coordinator. He'll work with new General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah as the two lead an evaluation of the current Vikings roster and identify free-agent targets by the NFL scouting combine in Indianapolis at the beginning of March. Free agency begins March 16; the Vikings need to clear more than $16 million in cap space by then.

As the Vikings' protracted GM and coaching searches give way to a truncated offseason schedule, the partnership between Adofo-Mensah and O'Connell will go to work at last.

"I certainly do believe, and even more so now that we've got our leadership here in place, that we are built to be successful right away," Vikings co-owner Mark Wilf said Thursday. "We feel very confident about that and like you heard before, we're going to work with Kirk [Cousins] as our quarterback and we'll move forward from there. But for 2022, for sure, we're going to be super competitive. Sustained success is the goal, and I think we have it with this leadership."

The first player Wilf mentioned is the one who again represents the Vikings' biggest offseason decision. Cousins is in the final season of his second three-year deal with the team, with a $45 million cap figure that trails only Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers for the highest in the NFL this season.

O'Connell was Cousins' quarterbacks coach for his final season in Washington; sources have said the coach is fond of Cousins, and O'Connell's arrival in Minnesota was received warmly by the quarterback's camp after years of Cousins guessing where he stood under Jay Gruden and Mike Zimmer.

If the Vikings are indeed committed to Cousins for 2022, it costs them nothing other than cash and cap space. If they decide to lower the quarterback's cap hit in the coming weeks, they could commit to him beyond his age-34 season. But that wouldn't be required, if they used the trick the Patriots employed with Tom Brady and the Saints with Drew Brees: adding void years to Cousins' contract that could spread out his final $35 million of base salary if the Vikings convert part of it to a signing bonus.

No matter what the Vikings' future holds beyond Cousins, he could give them the best chance to be competitive in 2022, particularly if they can solve some of the issues on a defense that became the first in franchise history to give up more than 400 points in back-to-back seasons during Zimmer's final two years.

The Vikings might have more questions to answer on that side of the ball than they do on offense.

They'll shift to a 3-4 base defense in 2022, O'Connell said on Thursday, and though they'll spend enough time in the nickel package to play plenty of four-man fronts, they will still need to project how well some of their current players fit in a new scheme.

O'Connell went out of his way to praise linebackers Eric Kendricks and Anthony Barr, who'd both played in a 3-4 at UCLA. Barr was projected as a 3-4 edge rusher before the Vikings picked him ninth overall to play outside linebacker in Zimmer's 4-3 scheme, and the Jets had planned to use him in a 3-4 in 2019 before Barr changed his mind and signed a new deal with the Vikings.

"Those guys have long been huge issues in this league for people defensively," O'Connell said. "I think there's ways to use those guys and allow them to play with an attacking mind-set while they're still responsible for the things that they're responsible for defensively."

But especially in the case of Barr, a pending free agent, the Vikings will have a choice to make. He turns 30 in March, and missed six games because of a knee issue that required him to have arthroscopic surgery at the beginning of the season. The team would also have to structure a contract in a way that entices Barr to come back, while fitting within the Vikings' tenuous salary cap situation. Because the Vikings voided the final two years of Barr's old deal while restructuring his contract last year, they have two years worth of signing bonus costs left to count against their cap. They cannot spread those costs out over more than two years, meaning any new deal for Barr would carry $4.945 million of dead money in 2022 and 2023.

A three-man front could have Danielle Hunter rushing from a stand-up position on the edge. He has done that some in his career, but the Vikings would need to assess his health after he played in a total of six games over the past two seasons. They added an $18 million roster bonus due on March 20 to Hunter's deal to resolve a contract dispute last offseason, and would likely consider an extension that gives Hunter some new money while lowering his cap hit from $26.12 million.

But his future is something of an open question, particularly after co-defensive coordinator Andre Patterson — the person on the team with whom Hunter might have been the closest — became the Giants defensive line coach when the Vikings chose not to retain him.

The Vikings need to rebuild a secondary that was stocked with veterans on one-year contracts last season, determine how they will handle the middle of their offensive line and see if they want to re-sign free agents such as tight end Tyler Conklin, who caught 61 passes in place of the injured Irv Smith Jr. And they are just over two months from the April 28-30 NFL draft, where the Vikings will have the 12th overall pick, their highest since 2015.

Now that the speeches and the photo ops are over, Adofo-Mensah and O'Connell can set about reshaping the organization. They will do it "side by side," Adofo-Mensah said.

"We know what we're trying to get to, and then really it's just figuring out where you are and what next steps to take to get there," he said. "That involves him being right next to me, understanding every step of the way what we're trying to accomplish, what moves, what are the highest lever points you can take to get where you want to go. That's what excites me the most about it. I want to be pushed. I don't think that I have every answer. We want to push each other, come up to the best decision, build consensus and end up where we want to be."