Kevin O'Connell on Vikings' Loss to Chargers

Transcript

00:00 Very, you know, very tough ending to a football game that, you know, quite frankly, we felt

00:08 like was in our grasps again and didn't execute at the end.

00:14 Overall, the way we needed to on either of our final two possessions to get one of those

00:19 footballs in the end zone.

00:23 You know, the last play sequence there, have a chance at KJ early on, just one of those,

00:28 you know, we don't miss a lot of those.

00:31 Then roll into a sequence of downs, hit TJ on the fourth down, and then first and goal.

00:37 I wanted to get a, you know, we have elements in our offense to go fast at the same rate

00:42 of time, hopefully, that a clock play would be.

00:48 There was a little bit of, with the crowd and the situation with the headsets, there

00:53 was a little bit of confusion early on by the time he was able to, you know, cleanly

00:57 hear me and get everybody aligned.

00:59 Too much time had come off the clock, probably, you know, looking back on it, you know, just

01:04 should have clocked it and taken the three snaps from there to try to punch the ball

01:09 in the end zone.

01:11 But wanted to try to, the way we're defended down there, if we can get a call that essentially

01:16 gives us a chance to score before they can set their defensive plan, bring extra DBs

01:20 and things in the game to defend some of our personnel.

01:23 I wanted to try to get one off.

01:25 At the very least, you're thinking it's an incomplete and you've got enough time under

01:29 our normal operation to get a few more, exhaust the rest of the downs if you need them.

01:35 That's not what took place.

01:37 And then we had the unfortunate tip ball pick there that eliminated our opportunity to win

01:43 the football game.

01:44 I thought we ran the ball well, which was encouraging.

01:48 Clearly, we're very explosive in the pass game.

01:51 We just need to be a little bit better on third down and give Kirk a little bit more

01:55 time to operate and try to find some people because, you know, there's some throws to

02:00 be had if we can keep him safe and clean, which is tough to do against the front with

02:05 Khalil Mack and some of those guys.

02:06 But that is the expectation.

02:09 And then defensively, you know, we knew that's a very good offense, very good quarterback

02:13 over there, a lot of yards, but they did get us the stop that we needed and gave us a premier

02:19 opportunity there to try to win the game and we did not capitalize.