The Minnesota Vikings are set to select a quarterback in the 2024 NFL Draft and it is all the fanbase can talk about. It's been that way for months and heated up once Kirk Cousins tore his Achilles tendon in October against the Green Bay Packers. It's been the talk of the town so much that it has infiltrated the church.
Yes, the Christian church has discussions about the Vikings' quarterback situation.
Vikings head coach Kevin O'Connell was the guest speaker at the conclusion of the Faith and Life lecture series at St. Phillip the Deacon Church in Plymouth, MN (a Minneapolis suburb) and was asked about the quarterback situation, most notably Michigan's J.J. McCarthy and North Carolina's Drake Maye. His answer was fascinating on many levels, even going as far as to call himself "the quarterback killer."
"For a couple of years, I've been kind of known as the quarterback killer when it comes to the (NFL) draft in Eagan because the feeling that everybody that I feel from our fanbase is when we get this next guy (quarterback), he's going to be the guy," said O'Connell. "I feel it, I know you guys all feel it. So, I have had to, you know in a lot of ways, fight off some mistakes from being made, mainly because the evaluation process I go through. I think about the things that are fixable, things that are coachable and you think about the things that you can coach another 15 years with a player and you might might not be able to fix.
"Hope and faith are wonderful things. I do like them to not necessarily be strategies, so I do very much believe in certain principles of playing the quarterback position, I believe the footwork and lower half of the quarterback can be fixed with the proper coaching and teaching. And I think when you see the good things on tape, see things that they can do better on tape. You're looking for a lot of different things and to check a lot of boxes. Ultimately, when you feel like you've found that guy, you gotta hope that 31 other teams are complicit and making sure that they can become a Minnesota Viking, but we only need one team to be complicit and hopefully we find that team"
The young man who initially asked the question to O'Connell mentioned his New England Patriots connection and that they could be the team at three overall.
"I may or may not have sent a nice bouquet of flowers to Robert Kraft (Patriots owner) the other day."
The biggest takeaways here are this:
- Footwork is fixable. This is very important if you want the Vikings to draft Maye.
- O'Connell killed the idea of other quarterbacks being taken.
This can be taken in multiple ways. The Vikings had multiple chances to take every quarterback and also passed on Will Levis and Hendon Hooker last season at 23rd overall. The answer about being a "quarterback killer" is likely a response to passing on both Levis and Hooker, as they were taken 15 times (12th most) and 36 times (3rd most) in 2023.
Will it be a good choice for the Vikings? Only time will tell, but it's evident that O'Connell is waiting for "the guy" at quarterback.
