Kevin O’Connell and Bill Belichick crossed paths nearly two decades before the Vikings head coach arrived in Minnesota.

Kevin O’Connell has a full plate. The head coach of the Minnesota Vikings has spent the last six months thinking about how to walk the tightrope between Sam Darnold and JJ McCarthy.

Fast forward to March and he has now been forced to think through two plans for if Darnold comes back and if he doesn’t. It now seems Darnold is hitting free agency, but even that isn’t guaranteed.

However, long before his current problems, the Minnesota Vikings head coach had a more simple but more difficult task: win over Bill Belichick. Before he joined the Vikings, O’Connell served as a backup quarterback for the New England Patriots.

Photo by Brooke Sutton/Getty Images

Kevin O’Connell’s view of Bill Belichick

Speaking on a March 4 edition of “Fitz and Whit,” Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell recalled his time playing for Bill Belichick. During the course of the reflection, he was clear about how he is different from the Patriots head coach.

“It was intimidating but it kind of created the foundation for every job I had from that point forward to this very day, and then to be around Coach Belichick and the way he did things,” he said.

He added: “He and I couldn’t probably be more different from a personality standpoint, but at the same time he’s become a huge mentor of mine, and I can ask him those questions that I had back then many, many years ago, but ask him from a perspective now on how I coach my team better, and how I become a better version of myself based upon not only the history of being around him but the relationship that’s formed since.”

O’Connell played for the Patriots in 2008. It was the season Tom Brady tore his ACL and O’Connell’s time on the gridiron in a game situation was short. According to Pro Football Reference, he completed four of six passes for 23 yards in his entire NFL career.

The quarterback was drafted in the third round, suggesting that the reason for the split was something seen in practice. Fast forward to 2025, and the head coach is one of the most well-known active coaching figures in the NFL.

Kevin O’Connell can overtake another mentor in one way

The coach might have learned his first lessons about coaching from Bill Belichick, but he also took plenty of inspiration from Sean McVay. O’Connell worked under the Rams head coach in 2019 and 2020 before joining the Vikings.

McVay has never coached up a premium rookie quarterback. With JJ McCarthy getting drafted by the Vikings, O’Connell has the opportunity to be credited with building a rookie up from scratch, something his former mentor McVay never did.

Of course, the question is whether O’Connell can do with McCarthy at the NFL level what Jim Harbaugh did with him at the college level, helping him win a national championship. Will McCarthy ever hoist another championship trophy in football?