Kevin OConnell addresses his Vikings future after eye-opening trade report

Do you, Vikings Head Coach Kevin O’Connell, want to sign an extension to remain in Minnesota?“I do,” O’Connell said Thursday, per The Athletic. And do you, Vikings brass, want to keep your current head coach in Minnesota beyond 2025, the fourth and final year of his contract? They do … probably. So says CBS NFL Insider Jonathan Jones, who wrote Thursday that, “The expectation league wide, for months, has been [that] the Vikings will extend [O’Connell] this offseason.”That expectation runs in parallel to the one Jay Glazer reported on “Fox NFL Sunday” earlier in January — that multiple teams were thinking about trying to trade for O’Connell.Now, it appears that those teams may not get the chance.Co-owner Mark Wilf told the Minnesota Star Tribune earlier in January he was “looking forward to a great future” with O’Connell, 39, and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, who is also entering the final year of his contract in 2025. According to the Star Tribune, the ownership group in Minnesota intended to open discussions about contract extensions for both the head coach and the general manager during the coming offseason.And while the offseason may have come sooner than Wilf and company were expecting, that doesn’t seem to have significantly altered their lines of thinking. After starting the season 5-0 and amassing 14 wins — the most for a Vikings team since 1998 — the 2024 campaign came to an abrupt and unceremonious end at the hands of Matthew Stafford and the Rams in the NFC wild-card round. Nonetheless, O’Connell has already had “great dialogue” with ownership, The Athletic reported.Despite of the anticlimactic ending to 2024, there are plenty of reasons for optimism in Minnesota. One wears No.

18 (Justin Jefferson) and, at only 25 years old, has all the makings to go down as one of the greatest receivers of all time. Another, once he’s done nursing his knee back to health, will wear No.9 (J.J.

McCarthy) — Minn...