Erik Ainge’s finest moments for the New York Jets in 2009 had nothing to do with the passes he threw. That’s life as a third-string quarterback — particularly then, on a Jets staff that usually carried 4 gamers on the place.
In the course of the 2009 season, Ainge would spend most of his days learning movie, taking notes, working with the scout staff. One among his most vital jobs was to assist beginning tight finish Dustin Keller along with his routes, and to check opposing defenses. He was competing to be the third stringer — however actually, he was simply competing for fist bumps. That was foreign money.
Forward of a Patriots recreation that season, Ainge observed one thing on movie about New England’s secondary and the way they’d modify their safeties based mostly on a sure look the offense was exhibiting. Ainge urged attending to play-action when the Patriots confirmed that look. The Jets used it within the recreation, and it labored: Mark Sanchez accomplished a protracted go down the sector. Ainge obtained his fist bump.
That was the closest Ainge may get to throwing a landing go in a significant recreation, with Sanchez locked in because the starter and Kellen Clemens second on the depth chart. These moments popped up each from time to time for Ainge. They occurred way more regularly for the opposite quarterback becoming a member of him on the backside of the depth chart: Kevin O’Connell.
“I took pleasure in it,” Ainge mentioned. “Kevin took a lot pleasure in that.”
When O’Connell was a Jets quarterback — throughout the 2009 and ‘10 seasons, after which once more in 2011 — his teammates and coaches typically referred to him as “Coach O’Connell,” although again then he didn’t love the nickname. His enjoying profession wasn’t over but, in spite of everything, and he needed to be taken critically as a participant. He was laser-focused on doing his job to the most effective of his capacity, particularly operating the scout staff and dealing in service to others, particularly Sanchez.
“Having to start out out with that of, ‘Should you guys have any questions, I’m right here as a result of I believe Mark’s doing O.Okay. on the quarterback place. I don’t assume they’re going to be calling my quantity any time quickly, so I wish to attempt to assist the staff win,’” O’Connell mentioned this week. “It kinda morphed and grew from there to extra than simply about that one explicit opponent. I simply began to see, Hey, you activate some tape, pair that with the data you understand already, and possibly you possibly can assist one play. Possibly you possibly can assist one participant on that one play have success. And possibly that led into falling in love with that side of it. Now, it’s simply on a bit of bit greater scale.”
O’Connell noticed the sector in a handful of preseason video games for the Jets. (Mary Ann Chastain / Getty Photographs)
O’Connell is now in his third yr as the top coach of the Minnesota Vikings, 4-0 this season as O’Connell earns raves for his work with quarterback Sam Darnold, one other former Jet. He’s the early favourite to win Coach of the Yr because the Vikings put together for his or her Week 5 recreation towards his previous staff, the Jets, in London.
Final yr, the Vikings misplaced Kirk Cousins when he tore his Achilles in Week 8. The Vikings traded for Josh Dobbs two days later — after which 5 days later, O’Connell threw him into the lineup mid-game. Minnesota received back-to-back video games with Dobbs at quarterback. This season, O’Connell has Darnold enjoying at a stage the Jets envisioned once they drafted Darnold third total in 2018. The Jets traded Darnold away in 2021 to make room for Zach Wilson. He bounced across the league, after which O’Connell unlocked his potential.
O’Connell has constructed up a repute as a top-level play-caller, however much more than that, he’s earned reward for his capacity to place quarterbacks — seemingly any quarterback — in place to succeed.
Similar to he used to for Sanchez as a third- or fourth-stringer for the Jets, O’Connell’s tenure in Minnesota has been one stuffed with fist bumps.
“When you’ve got a younger quarterback within the adolescence of their profession in New York like Mark, you need folks like Kevin O’Connell,” mentioned former Jets common supervisor Mike Tannenbaum, who traded for O’Connell in 2009. “He’s good, level-headed, he’s going to return in on a Monday and also you don’t know if we received or misplaced. You want that particularly in a market like New York.”
It’s working in Minnesota too.
Tannenbaum had his eye on O’Connell within the 2008 NFL Draft. O’Connell had all of the instruments: dimension (6-foot-5), athleticism (4.61 40-yard sprint), arm expertise and smarts. The Jets didn’t personal their third-round choose after a commerce earlier within the offseason however had picks within the fourth and fifth rounds. O’Connell was taken earlier than they might get him, scooped up by the Patriots on the finish of the third, 94th total, with a objective to develop him as Tom Brady’s long-term backup.
The Jets turned to Ainge, out of Tennessee, within the fifth spherical, a developmental arm to deliver into camp to compete with Clemens to be Sanchez’s backup. O’Connell solely lasted a yr with the Patriots, landed with the Lions throughout the 2009 offseason, and the Jets acquired him after coaching camp that yr for a seventh-round choose.
Tannenbaum liked his aggressive hearth — and the will to make his teammates higher.
“He was robust, he was good,” Tannenbaum mentioned. “Between my time (as GM) with the Jets and Dolphins I labored with coaches and one in every of my favourite shoppers was (NBA coach) Steve Kerr. He was not a ‘what you see is what you get’ man. Steve comes throughout as very affable however he’s a world-class competitor. Kevin has these very same traits. He’s a superb particular person, he’s good, however from a aggressive standpoint he desires to tear your throat out. That’s a uncommon mixture.”
O’Connell by no means performed a down within the common season for the Jets however nonetheless made an impression. Initially, he was acquired with an eye fixed towards including perception forward of a Week 2 recreation towards the Patriots.
O’Connell’s time behind Brady was quick lived, however the Jets believed O’Connell performed a task in upending Brady’s Patriots in a while. (Jim Rogash / Getty Photographs)
Defensive coordinator Mike Pettine referred to as O’Connell into his workplace that week and requested for intel. That’s widespread apply — choosing the mind of a participant who performed for an upcoming opponent — however doesn’t all the time bear fruit. However that day, O’Connell critiqued the Jets’ defensive game-plan, appeared on the scouting stories and even drew up a blitz for Pettine to make use of within the recreation — it was profitable within the recreation, resulting in a sack of Brady. Pettine renamed the playcall “Okay.O.” after O’Connell. The Jets received that recreation, holding Brady and not using a landing go.
This helped train O’Connell the ability of talking up. “I look again at loads of these occasions the place I didn’t actually know: ‘Ought to I say one thing? Ought to I not? Hey, what do you guys obtained occurring?’” O’Connell mentioned.
These Pettine-O’Connell conferences turned a weekly prevalence, which helped O’Connell to search out his teaching voice. It’s no coincidence that Pettine gave O’Connell his first teaching job in 2015, three years after his enjoying profession ended, because the Cleveland Browns quarterbacks coach. Pettine is at present on O’Connell’s Vikings workers, as assistant head coach and outdoors linebackers coach.
“Constructing that relationship with ‘Pett’ was some of the impactful issues that passed off alongside my soccer journey as a result of there was a coach, a very profitable defensive coordinator on this league, who was prepared to have only a no-name quarterback are available in and speak a bit of soccer,” O’Connell mentioned. “I discovered rather a lot from him. I discovered rather a lot from all of the coaches who had been in New York.”
Again then, Tannenbaum mentioned, head coach Rex Ryan would rave about O’Connell’s thoughts, calling him the Jets’ finest defensive coach. It’s why O’Connell caught round even after that Patriots recreation — and why they needed him again in 2011 after reducing him in 2010.
“Rex and the defensive coaches, they’d choose his mind as a result of he was so good,” Tannenbaum mentioned. “I keep in mind speaking to Kevin when he was a participant and it was so clear he had the flexibility to be a head coach. To see all his success now’s no shock in any respect.”
Tannenbaum, and Ryan, additionally inadvertently contributed to the second that set him on a path towards changing into a head coach: They minimize him. Twice.
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Matt Mulligan, a Jet from 2009-11 and Patriot in 2013, remembers how nerve-racking it could be getting right into a huddle with Brady, how he’d go searching at his teammates and easily say: You already know what you’re doing, proper?
That’s not how O’Connell operated. He’d determine if a teammate was fighting a play-call, and he’d rapidly get them heading in the right direction. “He’d do it in these cut up seconds,” mentioned Mulligan, a Jets tight finish. “You consider it now and say, ‘Look how nice of a head coach he’s, are you able to think about having him as a teammate?’ For him to be on that sideline and for us principally having one other coach that’s a participant — on the time you won’t have identified it however the way in which he appeared on the recreation was nothing however useful for Mark Sanchez and anybody he labored with.”
Mulligan had the profit, as a backup tight finish, of getting loads of reps with O’Connell when each had been members of the scout staff. However others, like extensive receiver Brad Smith and offensive lineman Damien Woody, didn’t get to spend as a lot time with O’Connell, even when they totally understood that they had been bearing the fruit of his labor on offense, the work he was doing behind the scenes.
“He was all the time serving to receivers out, serving to the opposite quarterbacks out once they had been enjoying, understanding, studying,” Smith mentioned. “You possibly can inform he was studious, he put his head down, requested loads of questions. Simply wanting again on it and seeing the place he’s at now, the dude was simply all the time teaching. These are the people who make groups nice. You want actually good gamers and also you want numerous expertise, however you mix the expertise with the selflessness and the willingness to place the staff first and that’s what makes groups actually, actually good. He actually helped us to set the tone.”
Added Woody: “Kevin was quiet. However I believe the one factor about Kevin is you possibly can see this dude might be a coach. Good man, absorbed issues rapidly, these are the kind of guys that sometimes transition into teaching. He wasn’t probably the most proficient man however he got here by the ranks the correct method.”
In school, O’Connell used to maintain a journal that logged every part he noticed in a given week — coverages, recreation conditions, how he carried out in these particular conditions. He introduced that technique with him to the NFL. On the sideline, O’Connell all the time had a clipboard and he’d chart coverages. In the course of the week, he’d work on cut-ups for offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer and he was on the Jets facility day by day, together with Ainge and the opposite Jets quarterbacks, all through his tenure. He was chargeable for analyzing third down, red-zone and two-minute drill conditions, invaluable apply for when he ultimately turned a coach.
Ainge recalled some mornings when wires would get crossed and he and O’Connell by accident labored on the identical cut-up. “So we’d buckle down like youngsters scrambling for a take a look at. Sure, Rex Ryan was referred to as a gamers coach, ‘one of many guys.’ Yeah, O.Okay., that’s in the event you do what you’re presupposed to. Should you don’t — he was very a lot not a gamers coach,” Ainge mentioned, laughing. “It solely occurred a pair occasions.”
After some lengthy days, Jets receivers would come into the quarterback room asking for somebody to throw them some passes again on the apply discipline. O’Connell all the time mentioned sure.
“It’s a bit of completely different whenever you’re not competing to be the man who’s enjoying on Sunday. We had it a bit of simpler,” Ainge mentioned. “Our job was to be good teammates. It was, ‘Sure sir, what do you want subsequent?’ We each form of lived that. It was extra simply enjoyable. I don’t assume we ever felt like we had been competing with one another. We had been simply guys that had been serving to.”
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O’Connell walked into Tannenbaum’s workplace in 2010 and the GM pointed to a chair and mentioned “sit proper right here.”
Tannenbaum didn’t even look forward to him to take a seat down earlier than blurting out: “We’re gonna allow you to go.”
The reasoning: Tannenbaum and Ryan felt like Clemens had outplayed O’Connell for the third quarterback job behind Sanchez and Mark Brunell. The tough second was proven on HBO’s “Arduous Knocks” for hundreds of thousands to see.
“We actually had hope after we traded for you that you simply’d flip into our long-term No. 2 and sadly that hasn’t occurred,” Tannenbaum advised him. “That was actually on the finish of the day, the distinction was there may be extra of a belief that Kellen, if he needed to go play, he has a greater likelihood of working our offense than you do.”
O’Connell nodded his head, dissatisfied. “I needed to be right here,” he mentioned. “That is going to be actually robust. Thanks for the chance.”
Properly, the Jets signed him again in 2011 after some accidents at quarterback … after which minimize him once more in 2012 to make room for Tim Tebow. O’Connell nonetheless has a voicemail from Ryan saved on his cellphone, the place Ryan advised him of his launch. It was a turning level in O’Connell’s profession, the second he began to significantly think about pursuing teaching.
“[Ryan] had excellent news and dangerous information,” O’Connell advised Ryen Russillo on his podcast. “The dangerous information is it most likely wasn’t going to work out for me to proceed on as a quarterback for the New York Jets. However the excellent news was he couldn’t wait to inform me in regards to the teaching alternative he had for me, which coincided with him telling me a number of occasions, ‘I don’t assume a lot of you as a quarterback.’ However he advised me a number of occasions, ‘Your life’s work is gonna be teaching.’” (Ryan declined an interview request by an ESPN spokesman for this story.)
“Not all the time what you wish to hear whenever you’re lacing them up and attempting to get higher day by day,” O’Connell continued. “However what it did is (it) gave me confidence that even the three years that I used to be there, I used to be most likely extra of a coach than a participant, in all actuality, whether or not it was serving to with the protection or serving to within the quarterback room with Mark Sanchez.”
Tannenbaum says now that “when a participant shouldn’t be enjoying, there’s all the time a vulnerability. It’s what it’s.” Finally, Tannenbaum insisted, the Jets had been higher when O’Connell was on the roster.
“If you deliver 53 jigsaw puzzle items collectively you need the most effective staff you probably can have,” he mentioned. “Having Kevin in your staff gave you that.”
O’Connell was McVay’s offensive coordinator throughout the Rams’ Tremendous Bowl season three years in the past. (Stacy Revere / Getty Photographs)
Just a few years later, Pettine employed him. He was with the Browns for a yr, labored “particular tasks” for Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers in 2016, and was employed as Washington’s quarterbacks coach in 2017. He helped Mulligan get employed by Washington as a energy coach, and so Mulligan obtained to see O’Connell on the infancy of his teaching journey.
Mulligan marveled at how O’Connell was “the identical man day by day”. Each morning, he’d go to the energy room, Nitro chilly brew drink in hand, and he’d “yap it up with all of the energy coaches, then he’d go do his enterprise.” Washington’s quarterbacks on the time had been Colt McCoy and Case Keenum — not precisely Kirk Cousins or Aaron Rodgers — however he had them “enjoying out of their sneakers”, Mulligan mentioned. When O’Connell spoke, gamers listened, even when they weren’t within the quarterback room.
O’Connell rapidly rose to offensive coordinator in Washington in 2019 and spent two years in that position working beneath Sean McVay, teaching Matthew Stafford throughout the Rams’ Tremendous Bowl season earlier than the Vikings employed him away. He led the Vikings to a 13-4 document and the playoffs in his first yr. Now, he has Darnold enjoying out of his sneakers, two former Jets quarterbacks — plus one other, quarterbacks coach Josh McCown — working in full concord.
O’Connell’s journey to this second, thriving, began with some fist bumps on the Jets sideline. There shall be some extra if the Vikings win once more on Sunday towards New York.
With the Jets, “I simply began to see, Hey, you activate some tape, pair that with the data you understand already, and possibly you possibly can assist one play. Possibly you possibly can assist one participant on that one play have success. And possibly that led into falling in love with that side of it,” O’Connell mentioned. “Now, it’s simply on a bit of bit greater scale.”
(Prime photograph: Al Pereira / Getty Photographs)
