History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes

After the 1995 season, the Minnesota Vikings had a big decision to make. Head coach Dennis Green arrived in 1992 and led the team to three straight playoff appearances. However, they went 0-3 in the postseason, losing two of those games as home favorites against decidedly mediocre teams (their opponents – Washington in 1992 and Chicago in 1994 – both lost in the next round).

Green had his off-field challenges as well. After that loss to the Bears in January 1995, news broke that the head coach had been accused of sexual harassing multiple female employees of the Vikings organization. Fans might remember Green issuing his infamous "bunker" statement, defending himself in extremely unconvincing fashion.

The next season, the Vikings lost their final two games to finish 8-8 and missed the playoffs. And although the defense took a step back, defensive coordinator Tony Dungy was one of the hottest commodities on the coaching market that year. Under Dungy, the Vikings defense finished No. 8 in yards allowed in 1992, No. 1 in 1993 and No. 5 in 1994 before slumping to No. 20 in 1995.

However, Dungy remained a beloved figure in Minnesota, a former Gophers quarterback who had turned himself into an elite defensive coach. When multiple teams requested to interview Dungy for their head coaching position, the Vikings ownership group led by Roger Headrick had a decision to make. The bloom was officially off the rose of the scandal-plagued Green, while Dungy's approval rating among fans and the media was sky high. But the ownership group made the safe choice – keep the head coach who had reached the playoffs three times in four years and let the popular defensive coordinator walk.

History shows how that decision turned out. Green's troubles continued – he threatened to sue Headrick and his crew for supposedly preventing him from purchasing a stake in the team, and he accused a Twin Cities media "cabal" of conspiring to bring about his downfall. Green's paranoia, coupled with certain media mouthpieces amplifying charges of racism any time he faced a modicum of criticism, created a toxic environment at Winter Park.

Despite leading the 1998 team to a 15-1 record, Green famously lost another home playoff game against the Atlanta Falcons that kept them from their first Super Bowl appearance since 1976, and when they returned to the the NFC Championship Game in 2000, they imploded against the New York Giants in the infamous 41-donut game that was more of an indictment of the team's character than its talent level. By the end of the 2001 season, Green's Vikings tenure was over.

Meanwhile, Dungy led the historically woeful Tampa Bay Buccaneers to four playoff appearances in six years and won two playoff games (one more than Green won in his first six seasons with the Vikings). The impatient Bucs canned Dungy and Jon Gruden won a Super Bowl the next year with Dungy's team, but Dungy eventually led the Indianapolis Colts to a Super Bowl victory in 2006. Say what you will about his problematic politics – Dungy ended up with a far superior résumé than Green's.

Fast-forward to 2006. The Vikings had just completed their first season under professorial head coach Brad Childress, whose best decision in his career might have been hiring 34-year-old Mike Tomlin as his defensive coordinator. Tomlin, coincidentally, had worked under Dungy and Gruden in Tampa Bay before Childress gave him his first opportunity to run an NFL defense.

And the results didn't lie – the Vikings improved from 21st to 8th in yards allowed and No. 19 to No. 1 in rushing yards allowed. Meanwhile, after going 9-7 in Mike Tice's final season, the Vikings slipped to a 6-10 record under Childress in 2006.

Once again, teams came calling on the Vikings' defensive coordinator. This time, it's hard to second-guess Zygi and Mark Wilf, who bought the team in 2005 and made Childress their first head coaching hire a few months later. One year later, they decided to hold onto Childress, who eventually rode the Brett Favre rollercoaster to the NFC Championship Game in 2009 before crashing and burning in spectacular fashion (though I'm pretty sure Chilly pioneered the practice of covering his mouth with a Perkins menu to prevent lip readers from stealing his play calls).

And once again, the defensive coordinator they let walk turned into a Super Bowl-winning coach. And it didn't take long. Tomlin was hired by the Pittsburgh Steelers, and in his second year he took the team to the promised land. Tomlin ended up coaching the Steelers for 19 years, posting a 193-114-2 record and winning the AFC twice.

Which bring us to today. The Vikings hired Kevin O'Connell in 2022 as the polar opposite of Mike Zimmer, the preternaturally humorless old-fashioned defensive-minded coach who led the team to three playoff appearances in eight seasons. Zimmer famously did not want the Wilfs to spend more than a nickel on offensive players, which set himself up for failure when the team signed quarterback Kirk Cousins to a fully guaranteed three-year, $84 million contract in 2018.

O'Connell was viewed as an offensive-minded coach who could maximize the skills of Cousins and budding superstar wide receiver Justin Jefferson to take the Vikings to the next level. And lo and behold, they went 13-4 in O'Connell's first season. Jefferson led the NFL with 128 catches for 1,809 yards and Cousins completed two-thirds of his passes for 4,547 yards. But in an echo of Green's early years, O'Connell lost his first playoff game at home to the Giants. Two years later, the Vikings got a career year from Sam Darnold but lost their last game of the regular season to cost them the NFC North title, then looked hapless in a road playoff loss against the Rams.

The Vikings let Darnold leave via free agency, and last year O'Connell watched helplessly his hand-picked successor, 2024 first-round pick J.J. "Nine" McCarthy, floundered and looked even worse than his final stats – which weren't great – might indicate. Backup Carson Wentz proved to be the only quarterback on the roster who could consistently get the ball to Jefferson, but the Vikings staggered to a 4-8 start before winning their last five games to put lipstick on a pig of a 9-8 season.

Of course, Darnold won the Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks and the Vikings brought in former Cardinals washout Kyler Murray on a one-year prove-it contract to compete with McCarthy. That proved to be a bit of a sham, as O'Connell handed the job to Murray after a charade of a competition in training camp. And Murray promptly proved to be very short and also incapable of thriving in KOC's complicated offense. J.J. was jettisoned to the Giants for a fifth-round pick, the draft equivalent of a tuna sandwich that may or may not have been sitting on the counter for four hours. And when Murray tweaked a hamstring in the team's first loss at Detroit on November 1, KOC handed the reins back to Wentz, whose performance against the Bills last night was literally one of the worst in Vikings history.

The loss was no fault of the Vikings defense, which has been amazing game after game despite the offense's inability to maintain possession for more than 25 minutes per game. Most of the credit for the defense's performance has been given to DC Brian Flores, whose madcap blitzing schemes have baffled quarterbacks since he arrived in 2023.

Flores already head coaching experience – he was fired by the Miami Dolphins after three seasons, in large part because he objected to tanking in order to land the team a higher draft pick. Flores has served as the Vikings' DC ever since, in large part because he sued the NFL for blackballing him over his accusations of racial disparities in the league's hiring practices. If not for the lawsuit, he probably would've already been sniped by another organization looking for a competent head coach.

So, at the end of this season (if not sooner, given the offense's catastrophic performances in contrast to its elite defensive counterparts), it's quite possible the Vikings will have another decision to make. Will the Wilfs hang on to O'Connell, whose gaudy 49-27 career regular-season record means little in light of his 0-2 career playoff performance? Or will they cut him loose and hang onto Flores, who has been so good for so long that some team will eventually decide this embarrassment of shunning a man so obviously ready for another shot has gone on long enough?

If the past is prologue, Vikings fans will be left to wonder "What if ..." as another talented defensive coordinator finds success elsewhere while the team's streak of Super Bowl-less seasons climbs into the 50s and beyond.