4 Vikings players who could get first Pro Bowl nod in 2020
By Dustin Baker
Brian O’Neill – RT
Why do we here at The Viking Age surmise Brian O’Neill is on the brink of Pro Bowl recognition?
Easy, O’Neill did not allow a single during sack his rookie season in 800 snaps and then he allowed only one sack in 2019 out of 969 snaps.
Even more befuddling is that O’Neill was intended to be a “project player” coming out of the University of Pittsburgh two years ago. But he saw immediate action when teammate Rashod Hill was injured early in the 2018 season. Serendipity at its finest.
Overall, O’Neill surrendered a pressure about every 50 snaps last year and this was nearly twice as good as his rookie campaign in 2018. The progression is glowingly trending skyward.
One final nugget is that new offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak and offensive line coach Rick Dennison have a statistically-verifiable history of acting as offensive lineman whisperers. This bodes well for O’Neill’s maturity.