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Late in the 2021 season, there were subtle signs that Vikings receiver Justin Jefferson wasn’t entirely thrilled with the situation in Minnesota, prompting concerns that perhaps he’d eventually want out.
With the news that the Vikings plan to hire Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell to be the team’s next head coach, Jefferson is all in.
“I’ve been watching the Rams offense for a minute now,” Jefferson told NFL Network from the Pro Bowl, via Chris Tomasson of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “They get their playmakers the ball. They have some tremendous plays, Cooper Kupp wide open all the time. So I’m excited for it. This is my first head coach that’s going to be on the offensive side instead of the defensive side, so I’m happy.”
Running back Dalvin Cook, who had a significant degree of loyalty to former Vikings coach Mike Zimmer, also sounds excited about O’Connell.
“[O’Connell] was with Kirk [Cousins] in Washington so Kirk has been kind of telling me, ‘Great guy to be around. Full of energy. Going to bring the energy,’” Cook told NFL Network, via Tomasson. “So I’m just looking forward to it. It’s a new opportunity, new era, new energy, so we got to take advantage of it. . . . We got a new head man, we got a new G.M., so we just got to put the right people around us and we just got to go get it.”
O’Connell won’t officially be hired until after the Super Bowl. And as we learned a couple of days after the Super Bowl played four years ago in Minneapolis, no head-coaching hire is done until it’s done.
