You could feel the existential dread rush over the the Vikings when star right tackle Brian O’Neill got rolled up on in Monday night’s game against the Bears. As O’Neill pounded the ground in agony, head coach Kevin O’Connell raced from the sideline to check on him.

There was almost a sense of disbelief inside U.S. Bank Stadium as O’Neill slowly limped off under his own power. This couldn’t be happening. Not after already losing left tackle Christian Darrisaw to a torn anterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament earlier this season.

Fortunately for the Vikings, O’Neill was cleared to return to the game shortly after taking a trip to the blue medical tent. Unfortunately for the Vikings, O’Neill got rolled up on again in very similar fashion.

This time, after heading to the locker room for further evaluation, O’Neill slapped a huge brace on his right knee, got taped up by the training staff, then trotted back into the huddle and didn’t miss another snap.

“He’s able to come back in there and stay in the fight,” O’Connell said. “I can’t say enough about him.”

Why did he push through the pain?

“It’s Monday Night Football,” O’Neill said with a smile after the Vikings finished off a 30-12 win over the Chicago Bears. “We had to win the game, so if they tell me, I’m good to go. I’ll go until I can’t go anymore.”

That answer is pretty much Brian O’Neill in a nutshell. Though many athletes tend to get cynical as they grow older, O’Neill still plays the game with a childlike joy that is infectious to everyone around him.

“I certainly have a lot of fun every day I’m in here,” said O’Neill, a 29-year-old seven-year veteran. “It’s pretty (awesome) that we get to do this. Just having that perspective makes everything else easier. If we’re having fun chasing something, it’s pretty easy to come in here every day with a really positive mindset.”

It hasn’t gone unnoticed by his teammates.

“He always has a smile on his face,” tight end T.J. Hockenson said. “You walk into the locker room and he asks everybody if they’re ready to have a great day.”

The youthful exuberance with which O’Neill goes about life, coupled with that rhetorical question straight out of Ted Lasso, jokingly induces eye rolls from some of the older players like safety Harrison Smith.

“Yeah,” O’Neill said with a laugh. “I think sometimes Harry gets a little squirrely with how loud and positive I am during a random practice in Week 16.”

That consistency from O’Neill has played a big role in his teammates voting him a captain. He never takes anything for granted when he steps onto the field. Not even a walkthrough in the middle of December.

“He’s very intentional with everything he does,” offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said. “You look at his eyes during a game and he’s like burning a hole through the guy across from him even in a slower setting. He’s a real pro. You really can’t say enough about him.”

As he reflected on how he’s developed into an unquestioned leader for the Vikings, O’Neill pointed to a specific moment from back when he was a rookie. He was eating lunch with veteran linebacker Eric Kendricks in the cafeteria at TCO Performance Center when he got a piece of advice that has stuck with him.

“He was talking to me about how he plays his best when he’s 100 percent comfortable with being himself,” O’Neill said. “Not that I was pretending to be somebody else. He was just saying that the best way to get respect is by being 100 percent myself. I started to let my true personality show, and that’s when I really started to have an impact on others.”

That was an inflection point for O’Neill, and he slowly started to let his guard down.

“I still felt like I had to earn my stripes in a way as a rookie,” O’Neill said. “I know I have a somewhat loud personality and I was very aware of that. I kind of took it to the extreme of shutting up and doing my job. There was a happy medium of being myself and having fun and not being a distraction.”

Nowadays, O’Neill is among the main voices on the Vikings roster, often serving as a conduit for O’Connell whenever a message needs to be communicated in either direction. It’s not a coincidence that O’Connell routinely has O’Neill break it down in the locker room after the game.

“I don’t think he gets the credit he deserves for how phenomenal he’s played,” O’Connell said. “There’s also an entire separate conversation about who he is in this building and what he means as a captain of our team.”

The fact that O’Neill is always the same person, win, lose or draw, goes a long way for those who work closely with him.

“He’s a captain for a reason,” center Garrett Bradbury said. “He just goes about his business the right way.”

That’s something O’Neill takes a lot of pride in. Though he’s proven he can stand up and give a speech if he needs to, he prefers to lead by example because he feels it carries more weight.

“There’s a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things,” O’Neill said. “If I try to do the right thing every day, over and over and over, and I already have eyes on me because I’ve been here for awhile, I think that’s going to have more of an impact.”

“There might be a couple of moments where it’s time to speak up and say something,” he added. “There are just a lot more daily touch points where people see what I do rather than hear what I’m saying.”

The most effective way to describe O’Neill might have come from rookie left tackle Walter Rouse.

Asked about O’Neill this week, Rouse emphasized how much he has appreciated having a veteran presence as a guiding light. As he continued to heap praise, Rouse tied it back to Monday Night Football, specifically the fight O’Neill showed in the heat of battle.

“You saw the way he went down and then came back in twice,” Rouse said. “He encapsulates what it means to play for the Vikings.”

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