The Sam Darnold Backlash Needs Some Backlash
Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
No one can tell you with a straight face that Sam Darnold did much of anything right in his final two games. In the two biggest games of his career, he looked almost nothing like the Darnold we got to know from the first 16 games of the Minnesota Vikings season. He was inaccurate, he held the ball too long, and he took 11 sacks in a pair of games where intentional grounding rules didn’t seem to apply.
You know this, I know this, everyone now knows it. Darnold showed us what he isn’t: A true franchise quarterback. It sounds so obvious now, but when Darnold toppled the Green Bay Packers, throwing for his 4,000th yard and his 33rd, 34th, and 35th touchdowns, it looked like Kevin O’Connell may have found his quarterback after all. It seems like a lifetime ago when a swell of folks were looking to trade J.J. McCarthy, but it happened. In 2025 and everything.
If you bought into Darnold as the Vikings quarterback going forward, that’s fine. It’s OK to be wrong. But people hate getting fooled, and Darnold’s regression wasn’t just a meltdown in the worst two possible moments. It was a betrayal, leaving people feeling defrauded through 16 games. Unless, of course, you were a jaded Vikings fan who always puts themselves on guard by expecting the worst. Then, you weren’t fooled, and you got to throw your “I told ya so”s onto the pile.
Now, things have swung the other way. In Drew Magary’s piece at Defector (evocatively titled “Sam Darnold Found His Destiny. It Was In the Toilet.“) signed off with “Thanks for the memories, Sam. Now fuck off.” The Star Tribune’s Jim Souhan’s piece (“Dump Darnold and Develop McCarthy“) was essentially in agreement. “Now O’Connell has gotten the best anyone has gotten out of Darnold, and the Vikings will again be right to believe that it was O’Connell and not the quarterback who deserved the credit.”
And, hey, you won’t get a lot of argument from me on focusing the future on McCarthy. But those last two games don’t mean Darnold was a fraud, and they don’t even mean that the Vikings have no use for him going forward.
Darnold’s not a bum. A bum can’t do the stuff he did this year. He balled out in several big games, making huge throws in crucial situations against big teams in tough circumstances. No Vikings QB had won in Seattle in six tries since 2006. Darnold did, with a missile to Justin Jefferson. Kirk Cousins never swept the Green Bay Packers in a season. Darnold did, slinging seven touchdowns against a top-tier pass defense. He’s shown himself more than capable of helping the Vikings.
Remember, too, that Minnesota’s not entering next season as a scrappy upstart. They’re a 14-win powerhouse that should expect to make the playoffs. Starting the year with McCarthy as a Plan A is a lot to put on someone who will be, functionally, a rookie. The NFC North is expected to be a tough division. The Detroit Lions aren’t going away, and neither will the Packers. Can the Vikings afford to risk a slow start? Daniel Jones might be a big, toolsy option as a bridge quarterback for O’Connell to work with, and he should get the benefit of the doubt, but the floor is a lot lower with Jones than Darnold.
Darnold’s left a lot of money on the table after these two poor performances. If he can’t get the offer he’s looking for on the market, there’s no better way to rehab his value than by doing it again. There’s still no better spot for Darnold to do that than Minnesota, and with the Vikings having $70 million in cap space, there’s plenty of room for Darnold to come back on a team-friendly salary for a year and still upgrade the team.
It’s an arrangement that can work for the Vikings, O’Connell, Darnold, and McCarthy. O’Connell and the Vikings can set a guaranteed floor of performance with Darnold, all while giving McCarthy elite competition to go against and hopefully surpass. If and when McCarthy earns the starting role, Darnold immediately becomes a trade asset to recoup much-needed draft capital. Win-win-win, unless Darnold can still get $100 million from someone.
There are scenarios when — even with the obvious benefits Darnold could still provide to Minnesota — it makes too much sense to walk away. If Darnold is looking for a guaranteed multi-year contract to return, yeah, he’s gone. Anything past a bargain price point ($25 million or so?) probably means the Vikings’ money is better spent rolling the dice on McCarthy and looking to bolster the roster elsewhere.
But just like it was silly to declare Darnold the future and McCarthy disposable, it’s unwise to totally close the door on a Darnold return and send him packing. It’s not hard to imagine a reality where it makes total sense to reunite Darnold with O’Connell in 2025, even if it comes with the understanding that he’s, once again, here to bridge the gap between him and the Vikings’ true future QB.
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