The NFL coaching carousel is a wild ride, and this particular offseason, there were 10 new openings to be filled.

Each and every year, fans can count on roughly 20% of the league to be looking for a new Head Coach, and this year we were well North of that figure.

The Minnesota Vikings haven't been in the market for a few years after the solid hire of current Head Coach Kevin O'Connell.

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While O'Connell's future and hot seat status can be debated, he remains one of the better hires in recent memory leaguewide.

That is the opinion of a Bill Barnwell article at ESPN ranking the coaching hires made over the past five years:

7. Kevin O'Connell, Minnesota Vikings
Seasons: Four
Record: 43-25 (.632)
There's no doubting that O'Connell is a good coach, having put together 13- and 14-win seasons over his first four years in Minnesota, but we can poke a few holes in that record.

One is the Vikings' performance in close games. They are 25-12 in one-score games over that span, and while O'Connell does a solid job of managing late-game scenarios, the wild fluctuations in their record in those games from year to year suggest their record in close games is more a product of randomness than a sustainable skill.

O'Connell deserves credit for what he has done in building offenses around everyone from Kirk Cousins to Joshua Dobbs to Sam Darnold over that time frame, but after a frustrating 2025 campaign from 2024 first-round pick J.J. McCarthy, some perspective might matter here, and it's similar to what I mentioned with Payton. The Vikings are 18th in EPA per play on offense over O'Connell's four years in charge, behind the likes of the Jaguars and Falcons, who haven't been offensive juggernauts for most of that time.

The driving force for the Vikings over the past three years has instead been their defense. If this were a list of best coordinator hires over the past five seasons, Minnesota's Brian Flores might be at the very top.