Kevin O’Connell loses another member of his staff that could have ripple effects on the franchise

When you have an excellent season like the Minnesota Vikings had in 2024, teams want to take from you. It usually manifests itself with coaches leaving for promotions with others coming from the front office. In this instance, head coach Kevin O’Connell has lost a member of the off-field staff.

The Carolina Panthers have hired Vikings director of performance Josh Hingst to the same role.

Vikings lose director of performance to Panthers

Hingst was hired by the Vikings in 2021 after spending eight seasons with the Eagles. His profile on the Vikings’ website breaks down everything that Hingst is responsible for.

From 2013-20 Hingst was head strength & conditioning coach with the Philadelphia Eagles, part of a team that won the first Super Bowl title for the franchise, Super Bowl LII over New England, in Minneapolis at U.S. Bank Stadium. Hingst implements a holistic program to address all areas of athletic development, utilizing a variety of strength, speed, and power methods to individualized to each athlete.

In 2013, his first year with the Eagles, Hingst played a major role in the implementation of one of the NFL’s first data-driven training systems, introducing technologies such as Catapult-GPS Tracking, Omegawave and Eliteform – Velocity Based Training, that culminated in an NFC East Championship that year. Hingst strives to remain at the forefront of progressive and cutting-edge performance training methods, recently utilizing Forcedecks, Nordboard, Blood Biomarker and Microbiome testing and Zebra Tracking Systems.

This type of personnel member is vital to an organization in a similar way to how the analytics departments are. They take in a bunch of data and decipher it to help the team maximize their output on the field. Having to replace him could have a ripple effect on the team.

Hingst is the second member of the 2024 staff to leave, as Grant Udinski left for the Jacksonville Jaguars offensive coordinator job earlier this month.