PALM BEACH, Fla. — Kevin O’Connell spent five days playing for the Detroit Lions in the 2009 preseason, and the new Minnesota Vikings coach said he has fond memories of his time there.
“I got to walk out on the field pregame and got to see Matthew Stafford throwing a football and said that’s what first overall picks are supposed to look like,” O’Connell said Tuesday at the NFL’s annual meeting. “We weren’t together long, but it was funny kind of eventually coming full circle to coach him was awesome and now he’s one of the closest people in the league to me and I got so much respect having accomplished that ultimate goal side by side with him.”
The Vikings hired O’Connell as their 10th head coach in February, days after O’Connell won a Super Bowl as Stafford’s offensive coordinator with the Los Angeles Rams.
Before Minnesota, O’Connell spent time as an assistant with the Washington Commanders, San Francisco 49ers and Cleveland Browns, and a had a journeyman playing career that landed him briefly in Detroit.
The Lions claimed O’Connell off waivers from the New England Patriots in 2009, then traded him five days later to the New York Jets.
O’Connell played in one preseason game with the Lions, a 17-6 win over the Buffalo Bills.
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He did not attempt a pass, but the Lions scored on the first play of his first series on a 79-yard touchdown run by Tristan Davis.
“When you wear No. 19 as a quarterback in a preseason game, people aren’t really looking for a lot of production out of that position, and rightly so,” O’Connell said. “No shot at the great Johnny Unitas or anybody, but I will say handing off the ball and watching it go for a (79)-yard touchdown in one of my first couple plays, I don’t know, I don’t think quarterback rating factors in with the efficiency of a handoff, but I couldn’t have done it better. Unfortunately, they did trade me the next day so I don’t think I had the impact that I wanted to.”
O’Connell said he ran into former Lions general manager Martin Mayhew, now with the Commanders, at the league meetings this week. Mayhew claimed and traded O’Connell in 2009, and explained to O’Connell’s wife why his time in Detroit was so short.
“My wife’s like, ‘Oh, we weren’t married at the time. I didn’t care,'” O’Connell said. “They claimed me to trade me cause there were a few teams that had put in a claim on me (when I was waived by the Patriots). But no, it’s one of the small things, you’re walking the halls and you see a GM that traded you one day and allowed me to go on my football journey to get where I am, so I guess I should go thank him.”
As for that No. 19 jersey, O’Connell said he did not get to keep it as a memory of his time in Detroit.
“They wouldn’t let me,” he said. “They took that thing right back from me.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.