Chris Kuper, former Denver Broncos' starting right guard, and most recently, assistant offensive line coach under Mike Munchak, has been hired by the Minnesota Vikings according to NFL insider Aaron Wilson.
Minnesota's new head coach Kevin O'Connell, who was also reportedly one of three finalists for the Broncos' head-coaching vacancy, saw something in Kuper that Nathaniel Hackett didn't, hiring him as the Vikings' O-line coach.
As Denver's fifth-round draft pick back in 2006, Kuper provided the team Pro Bowl-caliber play at right guard until he suffered a grizzly ankle injury to close out the 2011 campaign. Although Kuper recovered from the injury, he never could quite regain his form as a player.
However, he was a starter on Denver's Super Bowl XLVIII squad. After that, he retired in 2014.
From there, Kuper dove into the coaching realm, starting at the prep level at Columbine High School in 2015. The very next year, he received a hand up in the NFL, becoming an offensive quality control assistant with the Miami Dolphins.
The next year, Miami promoted Kuper to assistant O-line coach where he served for the next two seasons before being hired by Vic Fangio to serve as Mike Munchak's assistant in Denver. Kuper, who was drafted due to his acumen to play in the Mike Shanahan zone-blocking scheme, which implemented the wide-zone offense that Hackett plans to deploy in Denver.
Because of Kuper's knowledge of the wide-zone, I was surprised to see him passed over by Hackett for Butch Barry but it still worked out well for him. Kuper's upward mobility was not hindered as O'Connell hired him to be the actual O-line position coach in Minnesota.
Under Kuper's tutelage, the Broncos quickly developed three premium-round interior linemen to be starters in Dalton Risner, Lloyd Cushenberry III, and Quinn Meinerz. Although Risner showed alarming signs of regression in his third year, Cushenberry took a modest step forward in 2021, and Meinerz knocked it out of the park when he was installed as a starter at right guard midseason following the injury to Graham Glasgow.
In many respects, the Broncos developed Kuper both as a player and a coach. All that investment goes out the window and now, the Vikings will benefit from it.
Happy trails to the 39-year-old Kuper, who played all nine years of his NFL career in Denver, and spent the last three years as a coaching assistant.
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