Why WR coach Keenan McCardell is a key, unheralded figure in Vikings' 5-0 start

Keenan McCardell, the Minnesota Vikings’ receivers coach, has one major pet peeve. His players know it well. Ask Justin Jefferson or Jordan Addison what grinds McCardell’s gears more than anything else, and they’ll laugh and maybe even squeal before mimicking their coach.

Be open. Wide open. Every play. I don’t care. Just be open.

But what if the defense is double-teaming you? What if the cornerback is one of the NFL’s best? What if you are the fourth progression on a left-to-right passing play that is never going to reach the fourth progression? In McCardell’s room inside the TCO Performance Center, what-ifs are worth absolutely nothing.

“Open,” McCardell reiterated recently, “not covered.”

This pet peeve is worth mentioning now for a reason. Before the Vikings’ bye week, they played the New York Jets. Minnesota entered the game with the fourth-highest average separation in the NFL. But on that Sunday in London, the Jets limited the Vikings to their lowest average amount of separation in a game all season, according to Next Gen Stats. Taking things a step further, superstar receiver Justin Jefferson’s average separation was his lowest in a game since 2022.

From the outside, this seems like impressive work from the Jets. They’re the types of metrics that make you say, Fortunately for Minnesota, Sauce Gardner and D.J. Reed won’t be lurking each weekend.

But internally? McCardell will be doing what he always does after performances like this one: exhausting the pet peeve, stressing accountability. It’s the correct strategy for a receivers coach, especially with a game approaching against a Detroit Lions defense that is aggressive and similarly willing to play man coverage. It’s also an approach that could fall on deaf ears if not for the trust McCardell has garnered from these players.

Let everybody else talk.

We’re going to keep doing our thing.

📺: https://t.co/h9Udkyl6g5 pic.twitter.com/ZC4xl68Fvr

— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) October 14, 2024

When asked a few months ago what makes McCardell a good enough coach that Jefferson vouched for keeping him when head coach Kevin O’Connell was hired, Jefferson replied, “What makes him not good?” Jefferson then recited McCardell’s playing history.

McCardell played 17 NFL seasons with five different teams. He had five 1,000-yard seasons. He earned invitations to two Pro Bowls. Longtime NFL coach Tom Coughlin once described McCardell as “the sparkplug” of the Jacksonville Jaguars, a player who was “so intelligent” and “so anxious to do well out there.”

Newspaper archives are littered with telling stories. In 2003, McCardell’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers trailed the Carolina Panthers by a touchdown with about five minutes left in the game. On a third-and-20, McCardell motioned from the left side of the line of scrimmage to the right and after the snap sprinted up the right sideline. Bucs quarterback Brad Johnson lofted a ball in McCardell’s direction. With one cornerback draped all over him and two other defenders in the vicinity, McCardell lunged in traffic and snatched the ball with only his right hand, being crunched by a defender just as he caught the pass.

The touchdown gave the Buccaneers a lead they would ultimately squander. Afterward, when asked about the catch, McCardell acted as if it never happened, saying, “It’s just disappointing to lose. We needed to win, and that’s what I was playing for: the win.”

Buccaneers receiver Keenan McCardell scores his second touchdown of Super Bowl XXXVII against the Raiders on Jan. 26, 2003. (Doug Pensinger / Getty Images)

These types of anecdotes aren’t intended to paint McCardell as a perfect player. He made headlines for holdouts and used those experiences as a guide in conversations with Jefferson. He was cut later in his career and has often been a voice for receivers like Trishton Jackson who have bounced between practice squad and roster but continued to show up and improve. So many of these experiences, difficult as they may have been then, have strengthened his ability to connect with players in his current role. And those players are aware.

“To have a coach who has actually been there and done it,” Jefferson said, “you listen to him a little bit extra when he’s saying something.”

Minnesota’s entire building listens, too, and that’s partly why the Vikings’ group of receivers is constructed the way it is. Take Jalen Nailor, for example. Before the 2022 draft, McCardell was handed a list of names of receivers to watch. Once he immersed himself in Michigan State’s offensive tape, he enjoyed watching the receiver who wore No. 8 in Spartan green.

Nailor’s straight-line speed checked a box, but McCardell has always cared more about whether the receiver can transition in his routes with the speed necessary to get open. If he can’t, what good would the straight-line speed be anyway? Notably, Jefferson, Addison and Nailor all rank in the top 20 in average max speed per route, according to Next Gen Stats.

Even McCardell wondered whether Nailor, who often had been injured in college, could stay healthy. But if he could, McCardell felt the sixth-round pick was capable of an impressive career.

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A year later, in the spring of 2023, McCardell received another smattering of names in the aftermath of the team releasing Adam Thielen. The Vikings envisioned a young receiver who could complicate a defensive coordinator’s attempt at taking away Jefferson and ruin that coordinator’s day with his own receiving prowess. Names like Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Quentin Johnston, Zay Flowers and Addison popped up. If there was any hesitation about Addison, it lay in his size, but McCardell vouched for him adamantly.

Addison’s college-to-pro transition has not gone perfectly, and his quiet nature complicates the overall read, a stark contrast to the bubbly Jefferson.

“One thing that you guys (have) gotta understand about Jordan: Jordan has the utmost confidence in his ability because he has been that guy before,” McCardell said. “I don’t think you guys understand. He has been the best receiver in the nation. Biletnikoff winner. The pressure of that doesn’t faze him.”

McCardell also liked Addison’s playing history. At Pittsburgh, Addison played outside and in the slot, experiences that mirrored Jefferson’s at LSU and — consciously or not — ingrained a level of spatial understanding on the field. In O’Connell’s offense, which often brings McCardell back to his run-and-shoot days in Jacksonville playing in an offense built on option routes, an understanding of space and time is paramount.

While O’Connell is often viewed, rightfully, as an expert on quarterback play, his route specificity is an important ingredient in the secret sauce the Vikings have put together offensively. Having receivers who can enact these lines and drawings is most critical. But an underrated aspect of Minnesota’s design is the communication apparatus by which O’Connell disseminates the ideas to McCardell, who, as a former high school quarterback, can filter those ideas down to the players.

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That process is what happens regularly inside the Vikings’ receivers room. Once the installations are finished, McCardell creates a roundtable of sorts, speaking directly to Jefferson, Addison, Nailor and others, and allowing their conversations to marinate amongst the entire room.

“Everybody is hearing it because, at some point in their career, they’re going to cross that path of this guy or this guy or this guy,” McCardell said.

Last year, Jefferson tore his hamstring, and Addison became the No. 1 receiver. This year, Addison injured his ankle, and Nailor became the No. 2 receiver. The idea is to be so prepared that unforeseen circumstances do not doom the offense. Because ultimately, McCardell said, that’s what the receiver’s job is. Can you be so durable, available and accountable that when the quarterback scans from left to right, he can trust that you’ll be there and you’ll be open?

As he explained this, quarterback Sam Darnold walked by, looked over and smiled. It was as if he, too, wanted to acknowledge the role the man at the desk had been playing in all the winning this team had done.