Kevin O’Connell Provides Injury Updates on Dalvin Cook & Harrison Smith

O’Connell added he hopes to get Booth back at practice this week. Booth was also ruled out of Sunday’s game and has been recovering from a quadriceps injury since Week 1.

Here are two additional takeaways from O’Connell’s availability on Monday:

Bringing balance to play-calling and situational awareness

After the Vikings season-opening victory against the Green Bay Packers, O’Connell said he needed to do a better job of “picking his spots” for when he needs to communicate play calls with players and coordinators vs. being available to call timeouts or challenge a play.

O’Connell said during Sunday’s game against the Lions, those moments improved for him. He added he “always wants to be aggressive” when calling plays, alluding to a fourth-and-6 situation in the second quarter when Cousins completed a 6-yard strike to wide receiver Adam Thielen for a first down. After extending the drive, Cook evened the score at 14 with a 4-yard touchdown run.

“The fourth-and-6 on our second touchdown drive, I thought the third-and-6 play had a chance to score, just didn’t work out and then felt good about another play call, so didn’t really want to hesitate there,” O’Connell said. “Critical time, I thought, in the game for us to go down and get on the board, go score a touchdown and try to get that thing to 14-14.”

O’Connell added he learned that aggressive mentality from his playing days in New England with Patriots Head Coach Bill Belichick and as an offensive coordinator with the Los Angeles Rams under Head Coach Sean McVay.

“Treating each one as its own and understanding that I’m always going to go with my gut instinct at the time, but with a lot of information from a guy like [Assistant Head Coach] Mike Pettine, [Pass Game Specialist/Game Management Coordinator] Ryan Cordell in real time understanding what we think is best to try to win the football game,” O’Connell said. “I’m feeling more and more comfortable, our line of communication is really solid and then just my dialogue with the officials throughout the game maintaining good dialogue with those guys.”