Minnesota Vikings make key decision regarding Ed Donatell’s role with team

Despite commanding the league’s worst defense, the Minnesota Vikings won’t be making any changes to Ed Donatell’s coaching duties.

If Minnesota Vikings fans are thinking about using their Christmas wish to make changes to Kevin O’Connell’s defensive staff, they might want to think about using it on something else.

Ideally, fans would probably like to see defensive coordinator Ed Donatell fly away in Santa’s sleigh thus taking him as far away as humanly possible from the Vikings sideline. Donatell’s defense is last in the NFL in total defense, and has surrendered 400 yards or more in five consecutive games.

There’s a long list of evidence to suggest the Vikings defense is emphatically Not Good, but for quick reference take a look at how Minnesota defended what ended up being Jameson Williams’ first career touchdown.

Yikes.

According to O’Connell, though, there won’t be any changes made to his defensive staff at the moment.

“You know you’re always looking at things that you think might be — what could be a possible answer to help the guys play better and be more consistent,” O’Connell said. “As of right now, no, that’s not something I’m considering.”

Vikings fans had better get used to the defensive buck stopping with him — or the lack thereof since Minnesota’s defense hasn’t been able to stop much over the course of the last few games.

Will Minnesota Vikings fire Ed Donatell if this all continues?

It’s essentially common knowledge that the Vikings are a bad team with a good record — and a fair amount of luck. Despite being 9-0 in one score games, Minnesota recently became the first team in NFL history to have a 10-3 record while giving up more points than it scored.

To be fair, that’s a super popular stat to throw around right now that isn’t totally as bad as it seemed. A 40-3 shellacking by the Dallas Cowboys did a lot of legwork on that statistic and the Vikings points differential is 313-312, but that’s also being overly generous to a defense that doesn’t deserve such courtesy.

The fact of the matter, as frustrating as it may be for Vikings fans, is that the season might be too far down the road for a change to be made. Minnesota isn’t getting blown out of games — Cowboys and Eagles games aside — it just has a defense that can’t stop an opposing offense if its season depended on it.

Donatell might not be losing play calling duties at the moment, but another poor performance, and a slide in the NFC Playoff Picture, might go a long way in changing that.  If anything, more poor defensive performances will almost certainly convince O’Connell that a change needs to be made in the offseason to avoid a collapse like the Vikings are experiencing right now.