Vikings right tackle Brian O'Neill is having one of his best NFL seasons – if not his best season — in Year 7, according to both his head coach, Kevin O'Connell, and Pro Football Focus, the standard bearer of independent film analysis.

O'Neill, the team captain, appreciates the love from the boss. But he's a little more focused on this week's game plan for the Chicago Bears.

"It's a good feeling," O'Neill said Wednesday. "But it doesn't mean anything if I don't go out and play well on 'Monday Night Football.'"

O'Neill had less love for the independent film evaluators at PFF, who claim he's on track to have his best season as a pass protector. According to PFF's tracking, O'Neill has allowed an average of just one QB pressure per week. Only three tackles — the Eagles' Lane Johnson, the Buccaneers' Tristan Wirfs and the Dolphins' Terron Armstead — have allowed fewer pressures while playing at least 12 games.

O'Neill's 98.4 pass-blocking efficiency, which accounts for pressures per snap, would be the best season by a Vikings offensive tackle since PFF started tracking in 2011.

The Vikings' last meeting with Chicago on Nov. 24 was the equivalent of O'Neill pitching his fourth straight shutout for quarterback Sam Darnold. According to PFF, O'Neill didn't allow a single pressure on the quarterback for four straight weeks against the Colts, Jaguars, Titans and Bears.

Pause your calculators, O'Neill said. That's not how offensive line coach Chris Kuper graded him.

"No, I don't necessarily know if anybody can go four games in a row with a clean sheet," O'Neill said. "I'll take it. But I don't know, sometimes I don't agree with it. I don't always agree with them when they tell me I do good, and I don't always agree with them when they tell me I do bad."

The rub lies in what the Vikings define as "clean" versus PFF. Outside evaluators dissect results, whereas coaches and players focus on the process.

O'Neill might not have allowed a defender to obviously get in Darnold's way, but he can think of plays in which he messed up and didn't face consequences.

"What I'm talking about is I do something dumb, and I get away with it," O'Neill said. "Something might not be a pressure or hit or sack, but it's not necessarily the standard of how I should be operating. Sometimes you take a bad step, but your guard is there to help you. But your guard is not always going to be there."

Blockers go unnoticed when they're playing well, but O'Neill's play has been referenced frequently by O'Connell throughout this 11-2 season.

"Especially in a year where we've lost C.D.," O'Connell said, referring to left tackle Christian Darrisaw's season-ending knee injury in October. "If Brian wasn't playing to the level that he consistently has every game all season long, maybe we'd be in a little bit more of a crisis management mode. But it just doesn't feel like that because Brian's been so dang good, so consistent, and everything he's been on the field, he's been times-10 from a leadership standpoint."

Center Garrett Bradbury, who has played with O'Neill for six seasons, said it starts off the field for the tackle.

"His preparation is as good as anyone I've seen," Bradbury added. "How he takes care of his body: what he eats, the supplements, sleep. It's no surprise the success he's having on the field. He's as good of a tackle as anybody in the league. We're playing some good edge rushers, and we don't have to worry when they're on him."

But the offensive line had a bad start against the Falcons on Sunday, when Darnold was sacked three times in a lackluster first half. Bradbury and O'Neill surrendered sacks on back-to-back plays.

"We were in the same boat," Bradbury said. "That's kind of about the resiliency, because that's the worst feeling in the world."

Picking up teammates is kind of O'Neill's thing.

O'Neill, the 29-year-old nephew of Delaware Gov. John Carney, has long been a vocal leader behind the scenes for the Vikings. He used to be more involved, giving pregame hype speeches before the Vikings lost in Week 3 last season to the Chargers at home.

"I went way too crazy, and then I played terribly," he said. "I was like, 'I'm not doing that again.'"

"There's a really fine line between getting the guys going a little bit, but you also don't want to, like, blow a gasket for the appropriate term," O'Neill added. "You've kind of got to bring yourself back down a little bit."

Safety Josh Metellus, now a team captain, recalled O'Neill always being in his corner. When O'Neill suffered a torn Achilles at the end of the 2022 season, he told O'Connell he wanted Metellus to take his captaincy for the rest of the year.

"He said, 'I want Josh Metellus,'" Metellus said. "He's always been a believer in me. … It was enough that the whole team voted me right then and there, but for him to go out of his way to say something to K.O., that was special."

Once again, it was process over results for O'Neill.

He saw a fellow player in Metellus doing things the right way, and it didn't matter that Metellus was a little-known defender at that point.

"That spreads to other people," O'Neill said. "Your interactions with other people grow, and you can be one of the really good positive influencers to other players on the team. Hopefully, he's doing what he thinks I did for him to somebody this year. And in a couple years, there's somebody who thinks he did that for them."