Out of the six different head coaches the Minnesota Vikings have employed since the 2000 season, who deserves to be regarded as the absolute best?
After just one season, Kevin O'Connell has already accomplished something that only two other Minnesota Vikings head coaches have done in the entire history of the team.
In their first year with O'Connell as the team's head coach, the Vikings finished with at least 13 wins in the regular season for just the third time in franchise history. Dennis Green (in 1998) and Mike Zimmer (in 2017) are the only two other head coaches to lead Minnesota to 13 victories or more in a single season.
Unfortunately, O'Connell's Vikings were upset on their home field in the opening round of the 2022 playoffs. But this could have been the football gods just reminding Minnesota's newest head coach that he is a member of one of the most snake-bitten teams in NFL history.
Either way, O'Connell and the Vikings will be back in 2023 to prove that last season's success wasn't a fluke. He'll be attempting to become the first Minnesota head coach since Brad Childress in 2008 and 2009 to lead the franchise to back-to-back playoff appearances.
If O'Connell is able to accomplish this, he will likely be viewed as one of the best Vikings head coaches of the 21st century if some don't view him in that way already.
He is one of six head coaches to be employed by Minnesota since the beginning of the century in the year 2000. All were able to achieve their own level of success, and some certainly achieved a lot more than the others.
But when it comes to O'Connell and the other five head coaches the Vikings have had since the 2000 season, how should they be ranked, and who deserves to be regarded as the best of the group?
Let's begin with Minnesota's sixth-best head coach since 2000, a guy who probably wasn't given the best tools to work with during his time with the Vikings.