Coach Kevin O’Connell’s Vikings had just won their third consecutive game Sunday when he was asked exactly how good they could be.
“I’m old enough to remember when nobody thought we were very good,” he said.
He didn’t have to think back very far. At the start of training camp, some penciled in the Vikings for last in the NFC North, even behind the Bears. Then they lost rookie quarterback J.J. McCarthy to season-ending knee surgery during training camp, locking them into Sam Darnold for the entire season. Darnold and the Vikings have been one of the league’s great surprises, though — he has a passer rating of 100, and the Vikings are tied for the second-best record in the NFC.
“We’ve just got to continue to get better and prove it,” said O’Connell, whose team faces the Bears on Sunday at Soldier Field. “[An] 8-2 [record] means absolutely nothing.”
The Bears would love to know how meaningless 8-2 feels. The haven’t won eight or more of their first 10 games since 2006. Coach Matt Eberflus is 4-6 and sinking. Last week, the third-year head coach fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and replaced him with Thomas Brown, looking for a spark to save the Bears’ season — and his job. Both outcomes seem increasingly unlikely with each passing week.
The rest of the NFC North, though, seems to have found its long-term answers at head coach. That’s remarkable in a sport in which, over the last decade, a head coach lasts, on average, a bit longer than three years. In the last 13 months, nine head coaches have been fired. That number will only grow between now and Black Monday.
Presuming the Bears add Eberflus to the list, they’ll go looking for their own version of what the Vikings, Lions and Packers have found in recent years. Two are offensive play-callers, a leaguewide trend general manager Ryan Poles chose to ignore when he hired the defensive-minded Eberflus. A third, the Lions’ Dan Campbell, leads through the power of personality.
O’Connell, who calls the Vikings’ plays, has crafted an offense that ranks 10th in points and 15th in yards. He was the fastest Vikings coach to reach 20 wins, doing it in 30 games.
Campbell, who doesn’t call plays, started off just as slowly as Eberflus did, winning four of his first 25 games. The Lions went 8-2 to end the 2022 season to rocket into relevance and have become the NFL’s best team since. They’ve won 78% of their games since the start of last season, the best in the NFL. For the first time in the history of the franchise, the 9-1 Lions are the odds-on favorites to win the Super Bowl at +325.
The Packers’ Matt LaFleur has won 68% of his games, the third-best mark among active coaches, and never has been beaten by the Bears. When preparing for the rivalry game against the Packers last week, Bears players on both sides of the ball offered up unsolicited praise for the way LaFleur, as play-caller, married the Packers’ run and pass plays to make them look similar.
As for Eberflus? He has won 32% of his games, the worst mark of any active coach who isn’t in his first season. With the hardest remaining schedule in the NFL, his winning percentage could sink even further.
When Poles was hired three years ago, he promised to “take the North and never give it back.” Now he’d simply be wise to imitate the North.