The Vikings reportedly shut down the Giants' attempt to boost their offense
Usually, the best way for one football team to stop another from doing good work on offense is to play defense in an actual game.
For the Minnesota Vikings, however, they’ve taken the defense to the offseason game, as they have denied the New York Giants the rights to interview and hire Kevin Stefanski as their offensive coordinator, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
Stefanski, who just got passed over for that very position in Minnesota, remains the Vikings’ quarterbacks coach, a position where he gained quite a bit of renown for turning Case Keenum into a guy who before last season was 9-15 as a starter but this season went 11-3 in that role.
Keenum threw for 3,547 yards and 22 touchdowns vs. seven interceptions, and led a fourth-quarter comeback against the Saints in the playoffs.
It seems Minnesota wants to keep Stefanski, and sensibly so, but denying him the chance to advance in his career and move up the coaching ladder from a position coach to a full-fledged coordinator?
That is as cold as the snows of the state they represent this time of year.
It should be noted that the offensive coordinator in New York won’t call the plays the way that position normally does around the league; former Vikings OC and new Giants head coach Pat Shurmur reserves that duty for himself.
So not only does Stefanski get passed over for a promotion, he loses out on a chance to dip his toes in a low-risk position.
After all, if the Giants succeed, the OC gets some of the credit if they score lots of points.
If they fail, the OC can blame the head coach and say, “Hey, it wasn’t me calling the plays out there, take it up with the boss.”
The guy who beat out Stefanski for the job in Minnesota was Eagles quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo, and sure, you could make a good argument that anything Stefanski did with Keenum has nothing on DeFilippo turning Nick Foles into Joe Montana at the end of the regular season and during the Eagles’ Super Bowl championship-winning run.
The Giants, meanwhile, remain on the hunt for an offensive coordinator.
Philly running backs coach Duce Staley is a possibility, but the Eagles, having lost one position coach via promotion on another team, might not be so keen to lose another; Philadelphia was fourth in the NFL in rushing yards per attempt in 2017, and keeping the coach responsible is just a smart move if the Eagles hope to make another deep playoff run next season.
Seahawks offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell has seen his name floated around in rumors for the Giants job, but Seattle was a mediocre offensive team, finishing just 11th in points and 15th in yards while missing the playoffs with a 9-7 record. That’s a big step down from trying to raid the staffs of conference finalists, including the Super Bowl champions.
Stefanski’s father, Ed Stefanski, is executive vice president of the Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA.
Considering that the Grizzlies are a disaster area of a franchise, with two late-season limps into first-round playoff defeats in 2016 and 2017 and the bottom falling out of their team this year — Memphis is 18-36 and second-to-last in points per game — the son is surely having a better year than the father.
But Minnesota has the younger Stefanski under contract, and with Keenum poised to spend the fall trying to hold on to his job (you’ll recall his team also has Sam Bradford and Teddy Bridgewater, at least for now) and prove that his big breakout season wasn’t a fluke as he turns 30 next week, the Vikings are doing everything they can to keep the coach who unlocked his potential on staff.
The fact that they just tackled the Giants offense in the backfield is New York’s problem, not theirs.
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