According to Adam Schefter of ESPN, the Minnesota Vikings will hire Eagles quarterback coach John DeFilippo as offensive coordinator.
The Vikings interviewed a number of candidates, including current Vikings quarterback coach Kevin Stefanski and former Vikings offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell. While an announcement had been expected a few weeks ago on who the offensive coordinator would be, it was later revealed that the Vikings would wait until after the Super Bowl to hire their coordinator.
That led to speculation that it would be DeFilippo, who had been a rumored head coach candidate for a few teams over the past two years and is the former Browns offensive coordinator and current Eagles quarterback coach.
With the Eagles, quarterbacks Nick Foles and Carson Wentz put together the fourth-most efficient passing offense by passer rating throughout the regular season and postseason, and finished the Super Bowl having thrown more touchdowns than any other team.
It’s unknown what this means for Stefanski, the team’s current quarterbacks coach, though there’s a good likelihood that he’ll join former Vikings offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur with the New York Giants.
That would leave the quarterbacks coaching job open once more, which could be filled by DeFilippo himself, if he wanted to pull double duty, or people like Eden Prairie-native Todd Downing (formerly of the Oakland Raiders) or former Giants head coach Ben McAdoo, who filled that role for the Green Bay Packers before joining the Giants.
It’s difficult to project how a coordinator will do based on their performance as a position coach, or even how impactful a position coach has been in the first place. DeFilippo has been praised for his work in Cleveland, despite finishing 30th in the league in total points scored — perhaps a testament to how difficult it was to design an offense for Johnny Manziel, Austin Davis and Josh McCown throwing to Travis Benjamin, Gary Barnidge and Brian Hartline.
While DeFilippo has “West Coast offense” roots, offenses these days are becoming less defined by systems and more defined by the capabilities of the coordinators to implement flexible game plans, like Shurmur did for the Vikings a year ago. If his stint with the Eagles is any indication, DeFilippo should be a flexible coordinator himself.
Catch Arif every week on The Zone Coverage Football Machine
