The Detroit Lions made it to the seed 1 in the playoffs of NFC this year. They defeated the Minnesota Vikings in the finale of the 2024 regular season, clinching the spot. On the flip side, Kevin O’Connell and his team ended up as the No. 5 seed. Now, as they are moving into the playoffs soon with this loss, the head coach has some important considerations to make.

When asked about his next approach to the playoffs, Kevin O’Connell remarked, “We’ve been at a pretty strong clip down there finishing with touchdowns over the last six, seven weeks or so. And that did not happen tonight. (So) We got to take a look at it and be ready to try to improve immediately and know the challenge.”

With this statement, Kevin O’Connell reminded the fans about how the Chiefs did a similar thing in the 2023 season. They were losing games at the end of the regular season in 2023. However, as soon as the playoffs started, Andy Reid’s team picked themselves up, and went on to win back-to-back games, thereby winning the Super Bowl.

Therefore, Kevin O’Connell believes that by drawing the same page from Andy Reid’s playbook, he can win the playoffs too. The adoption of this new plan came after the Vikings had a terrible 9-31 loss against the Lions. Their opponents limited Vikings’s key players such as Sam Darnold and Justin Jefferson on the field.

That’s the reason why Kevin O’Connell called out Sam Darnold’s offense during his press conference.

Kevin O’Connell pointed out Sam Darnold’s mistakes!

There were several mistakes and missed opportunities by the Vikings on Sunday. First came off with Lions’ running back Jahmyr Gibbs. It seemed that Minnesota had no answer to RB’s 139 yards and three rushing touchdowns. And as if that wasn’t enough, he caught another touchdown pass. His two fourth-quarter scores crushed any hopes the Vikings had.

Top Comment by James Pieknik

I’m not gonna tell you how to fix y’all problems, that’s for coach O’connell to figure out. Darnold had the...more

Share your take

Debate

In addition, Sam Darnold, who had been spectacular all season with 35 touchdowns, picked the worst time to have an off day. He missed open receivers when it mattered most. The team reached the red zone four times but couldn’t find the end zone even once, settling for just nine points. Darnold himself admitted his mistakes, saying, “For me personally, didn’t hit the throws that I should hit in the red zone, especially early on. Yeah. Just didn’t execute the way that we wanted to. … Just gotta be a lot better, and for myself personally, gotta hit the throws in tight coverage.”

As Sam Darnold is ready to improve himself, Kevin O’Connell too, who pointed out the mistakes of offense, is ready to do the same. During the presser, he emphasized the importance of finding new ways to help players get open and execute plays. While calling out his QB and the offense, he stressed, “We’ve got to take a look at it – fundamentals, techniques and take a look at the plays that things happened on the Monday night game…..clearly it starts with me. I got to have our team ready to execute and pitch and catch and do the little things we didn’t. We won the turnover battle and we had opportunities to put the ball in the end zone and just didn’t do it so clearly we need to take a look at it and be ready to improve immediately.”

The Vikings are ready to improve, but will they be able to? Well, it remains to be seen in the playoffs as the Vikings will face the Rams on Jan 14.