Did Jay Glazer reporting on Jan. 5 that multiple teams are going to make a run at trading for Kevin O’Connell put an unwanted distraction in the Minnesota Vikings locker room?
Glazer’s report came during the Fox NFL Sunday pregame show just hours before the Vikings played the Lions that night in a battle for the No. 1 seed and the NFC North title. Specifically, Glazer said — and he’s since doubled down on his reporting — that “are multiple teams that are actually considering trying to trade for Kevin O’Connell.”
Vikings radio announcer Paul Allen initially doubted the veracity of Glazer’s report, but he’s now of the opinion that Glazer wouldn’t go with the report unless he had solid intel about the situation. Either way, Allen shamed whoever is responsible for giving Glazer the information at such a critical point in Minnesota’s season.
“The more I’ve thought about it, and not knowing the origin of that rumor that popped up the day they were playing the Lions, Jay Glazer just does not wake up one morning and say, ‘I think I’m going to go with this,” Allen said Tuesday on his weekday radio show on KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities.
“It’s the timing. I’m just gonna lay it out like this. If that rumor came from Kevin O’Connell’s agent, and I don’t even know what his agent’s name is, shame on him and shame on everybody involved with that rumor if it came from there. Because it deflects attention from a game that day to secure a 1 seed for a 14-win team.
“I don’t know where this thing came from, man, but I just know what it was like being in Troy, Michigan at the team hotel when it popped and then the conversations on the sideline before the game, and the conversations after the game, and some conversations I had last night with people about the future of the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings.”
Allen repeated that he’d be “flabbergasted” if O’Connell doesn’t sign an extension with the Vikings. O’Connell is signed through the 2025 season and Vikings owner Mark Wilf recently told the Star Tribune that he plans on retaining O’Connell and general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah beyond the next season.
“I’m just starting to try to figure out,” Allen continued. “I’m not going to pursue this, but like, how? Why? Why at that time? And if it came from anybody associated with Kevin O’Connell’s camp, I’m just going to say it as bluntly as I can, shame on you. That’s selfish and it lacks self awareness, and it jettisons the totality of a team and it takes it from thy to I.
“Now, I don’t have any confirmation that it came from anybody involved in the Kevin O’Connell camp. But again, the best of the best in the NFL don’t go with rumors on popular pregame shows unless they feel they have something concrete from a source they know they can trust, plugged into a situation like this.”