Getting to know a Denver Broncos coaching candidate: Kevin O'Connell

SEVENTH IN A SERIES

Kevin O’Connell doesn’t call plays for the Los Angeles Rams — at least not beyond the preseason, when head coach Sean McVay cedes the play-calling responsibilities to his nascent offensive coordinator.

But it is that McVay connection that makes O’Connell’s name jump off the list among the Broncos’ head-coaching candidates. He is expected to interview with both the Broncos and Minnesota Vikings in the coming days.

“It is a real honor to have your name thrown out,” O’Connell said Jan. 14. “I think it really speaks to the head coach I work for now, all of our coaches, all of our players, and what our guys have been able to do this year.”

While O’Connell is a strong young candidate, the head coach for whom he works does matter in considering his candidacy.

Unlike the Bill Belichick coaching tree, which has largely failed to produce fruitful NFL head coaches, the three ex-McVay assistants now serving as head coaches have combined for five winning seasons and four playoff appearances in a collective seven seasons as head coach.

This year, former McVay assistants Matt LaFleur (Green Bay Packers), Zac Taylor (Cincinnati Bengals) and Brandon Staley (Los Angeles Chargers) all had their teams on the right side of .500. LaFleur and Taylor will guide their teams into divisional-playoff showdowns next Saturday.

And three of the Broncos’ other nine coaching candidates work for McVay disciples: Cincinnati offensive coordinator Brian Callahan, Green Bay offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett and Green Bay passing-game coordinator Luke Getsy. Getsy and Hackett completed their interviews with Broncos officials last Friday and Saturday, respectively.

So, if the Broncos are interested in the branches that sprung from McVay’s former understudies, it comes as no surprise that they would be interested in McVay’s offensive right-hand man, who appears to be the next in line to leave what has become the NFL’s most productive coaching orchard.

It also says a lot that last year, McVay declined to let O’Connell leave to have play-calling responsibilities elsewhere.

In 2018, McVay did not stand in the way when his offensive coordinator the previous year, LaFleur, left for the same position with the Tennessee Titans — but one that had the play-calling duties that McVay handles with the Rams.

But three years later, McVay and the Rams blocked O’Connell from a similar move.

“That is accurate,” McVay said last Feb. 25 at a press conference when asked about whether the Rams did, indeed, put a stop sign on O’Connell’s potential departure. “Kevin’s a great coach. He’s our offensive coordinator. He has a huge say and a huge influence on how we want to operate, and I think even more so moving forward. I was really excited about the opportunity to be able to work with him in year two, continue to collaborate, learn from him.

“He understands how valuable he is to me and to the Rams and we talked about all those things, but I think it’s a credit to the respect that he’s garnered around the league. What I would say is he’s our OC and that’s why we blocked him.”

Like Callahan under Taylor in Cincinnati, O’Connell has deep involvement in the design of the game plan, allowing McVay to focus on his head-coaching duties. He also does well at adhering to the Rams’ process-based approach, a philosophy that Von Miller has praised since joining the team via trade from Denver at midseason.

“We have been so even-keeled and so consistent with things that we do, how we prepare,” Miller said in Week 17. “When I was with the Denver Broncos, when we lose, it’s time to double down on something. It’s time to go harder, it’s time to do something differently, it’s time to watch more film, practice a little bit harder, lift a little bit harder.

“And these guys (the Rams), they just got a formula. We come in, we do our stuff, we go home. And we trust our guys. We trust the stars on the team. We trust the foundational players. We trust the coaches. And honestly, we just come in and we do the exact same thing. When we we’re losing, we were doing the exact same thing.”

That process and formula matters this week, when the Rams face a division rival in the wild-card round. The Arizona Cardinals know the Rams’ tendencies from two games a year against them. There won’t be any fooling a familiar opponent. That is where O’Connell and the Rams’ focus on fundamentals and process can separate them.

As O’Connell noted last week, you can “talk yourself out of a lot” of play calls because of the familiarity — and by what you put on tape against similar teams. But if you step back and focus on fundamentals and process, you have a sustainable approach for moments like the one the Rams face Monday night.

“That’s why we teach a lot of the things we do from the core foundational standpoint of our system, because everything is built off the marriage of the run and the pass,” O’Connell said at a press conference last week. “It’s built off of sameness and likeness and really attacking the defense in a smart way.”

That is what O’Connell would bring to his next team. While the former San Diego State quarterback and ex-Patriots draft pick has the requisite coaching skills, the most important thing he would bring is the Rams’ process-based approach.

And as the Bengals, Packers and Chargers have shown, this philosophy gets results. It translates. If the Broncos hire O’Connell, it would be fair to expect the same improvement as those clubs experienced.