And, after further review, I don’t know how it was portrayed that way
Following Thursday night’s NFL Honors ceremony, things got a little weird for Minnesota Vikings fans when a reporter from the Detroit Free Press reported that head coach Kevin O’Connell, fresh off of winning his first NFL Coach of the Year Award, said that quarterback Sam Darnold would be a “huge part” of bringing a championship to Minnesota.
This was news to most Vikings fans, given that Darnold is set to hit free agency in a little more than a month and the team has J.J. McCarthy waiting to take over the team. The feeling among many fans seems to be that moving on to McCarthy has been the plan all along, so news that Darnold could be back came as a bit of a shock.
Well, as it turns out, Kevin O’Connell did say there was a player who would be a huge part of bringing a championship to Minnesota. But that player wasn’t Sam Darnold. It was, in fact, wide receiver Justin Jefferson, which is a revelation that would come as a surprise to nobody.
Here is the video of O’Connell’s statements after his award presentation at Thursday’s ceremony.
Yes, you’ll have to go to YouTube to watch the video, but it’s only about five minutes long. The relevant portion starts at about 2:30 in, when a female reporter (whose name I didn’t catch or wasn’t identified) asks a question wherein she makes it clear that she wants to talk to O’Connell about Jefferson. It was in the midst of answering that question that O’Connell says that Jefferson will be a huge part of bringing a championship to Minnesota.
After watching the way O’Connell handled the questions at the press conference, I’m really not sure how it got misconstrued that he was talking about Darnold and not Jefferson. There was a pretty clear separation between the questions that had been asked, and the first question was clearly about Darnold while the second one (where the quote came from) was just as clearly about Jefferson.
So, to recap, Justin Jefferson will be a huge part of bringing a championship to Minnesota (because duh), while Sam Darnold may or may not be considering that there’s a better-than-average chance that Darnold won’t be a Minnesota Viking at all in a couple of months.
