What's Fair for Sam Darnold?

When a good quarterback proves he's good, the question then becomes: is he good enough?

(Mark J. Rebilas - Imagn Images)

“It did not work out in the end.”

That’s what Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell had to say about his quarterback Sam Darnold on Monday, the meat of a compliment sandwich served up after a devastating, season-ending loss. Or, in a show of respect to Minnesota’s Juicy Lucy culture, the cheese inside (!!) the compliment patty.

Either way, it may be telling. The reason that line is being bolded by every other outlet is because it features the words “in the end,” in that order and everything. Which, you know, could be taken to mean that Monday was an ending to something more than the Vikings’ season. It could also be the end to Darnold’s time in Minnesota.

Now, I doubt that’s what O’Connell meant, not least of all because that just wouldn’t be necessary for him to say aloud. The Vikings have a decision to make, which will fall primarily to their (excellent) GM, Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. O’Connell will weigh in, obviously. Privately, away from the microphones, he’ll probably give his honest take on the situation. I do not know what that is, and I’m not about to guess. (JK, I am — I think that maybe he did mean the above, and he wants Darnold outta there. Just a hunch.)

But let’s just be frank about this part. The Vikings were not expecting this good of a season from Sam Darnold. They probably thought the team was better than its win projection heading into the season, being that Vegas set the line at the low low price of 6.5 wins. Minnesota obviously crushed that, finishing 14-3.

Before it all came crashing down, this had been a fantastic success. There were signs of potential fraudulence in their DVOA numbers (11th, behind teams like the Rams, the Chargers, the Broncos and the Commanders), but they were good. It was a 7-win turnaround from their 2023 season, when they finished 7-10 and picked in the top 10 of the next year’s draft.

And, of course, that is where our story continues. J.J. McCarthy was the pick there, and going into this year, he was thought to be a good bet to start for much of the season. Then he tore his meniscus in the preseason and missed the whole year. Womp womp.

For much of the year, then, it became a question — at least out here in the open — as to whether the Vikings would be better served keeping Darnold, who looked like a changed man for much of 2024, or the young gun they just drafted to replace the dearly departed Kirk Cousins (RIP).

The sad reality here is that the Vikings might be a little happy about this outcome. They would’ve preferred a longer playoff run, obviously, but if they were going to come up short, this wasn’t the worst way to do it in the grand scheme of things. Why? Because Darnold just gave them an out, and fewer of their fans will be pissed if they take it.

Minnesota is a well-run organization. They’ve got Good Bones, gosh darnit. O’Connell is an excellent football coach. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah is an excellent GM. Together, they have built an excellent team. And this season, do you want to guess what adjective I’d use to describe Sam Darnold? He was excellent. He was very good! Several magnitudes better than his formerly phantom-menaced self in New York.

Arbitrary that it is, he’d been ranked the #27 starting QB going into the season, a reflection of the fact that people thought he was a backup who’d been thrown into a starting role after proving he wasn’t up to the job.¹ He hadn’t been a regular starter since 2021, after he was (don’t) Jettisoned out of New York. The expectation was that Darnold would, again, disappoint.

He did not! I won’t get into all the numbers, but by just about any metric, he was an above-average starter in the NFL this season. As far as counting stats go, he was 5th in both passing yards and TD passes, which never hurts. He was rightly on the periphery of the MVP race. By the end of the year, in those same NFL.com rankings, he finished the year as starting QB #5.²

And let’s not let this point go unmade: you won’t see a ton of QBs turn in a winning performance when they’re getting sacked 9 times. Darnold’s not exempted from that number — he continues to hold onto the ball too long sometimes — but some of them were just a consequence of a pretty shaky O-line in Minnesota running into a well-manned and well-schemed front from Los Angeles. They were running these long-developing routes for Jefferson and Addison that they just weren’t getting to, and Darnold sailed a few balls he’d been hitting all year. He looked rattled all night. It was a tough finale to a good and sometimes great year.

What’s it all amount to? He might’ve lost himself some money, whether that was going to come from Minnesota or someone else. But I bet the hit isn’t as bad as some fear — people forget how bad the other options on the QB market are — and we have to put this all in context, as if it were an investment. You can get upset about his stock taking a 30% nosedive to end the Fiscal Year Darnold, but you’d be comfortably ahead if you’d bought low on him before the season. He’s up. He’s up big.

This time last year, there was no big deal on the horizon. Now there is. Maybe it’s not as big as it was in November, but it’s gonna be a lot better than it was in September.

Sam Darnold is 27. This next deal could well cover the best playing years he ever has. Will he play those years in Minnesota? I don’t know. Maybe he likes it there. He was clearly better in O’Connell’s system than he’s ever been anywhere else. But I suspect he’ll want another shot to be the guy, I doubly suspect that that will be somewhere else, and I triply (!!) suspect that the Vikings (due to Minnesota Nice) will want him to have that shot. (For that reason, I do not suspect that they’ll be franchise-tagging him.)

And finally, quadruply, I suspect that Darnold’s going to be an above-average QB next year too, wherever he lands. I wouldn’t trust him to remain a top 10 guy, but I think he’ll be around that 12-14 range, and he’ll be paid accordingly. Some teams might be worried about this ending, and I get that. But I’m choosing to believe in the redemption arc, even if it does land him in… Pittsburgh? Vegas? Back in New York…?

Yeah, you’re right. Let’s stick to PittsVegas. No ghosts there, I’m sure.

🏈 The coaching carousel has gotten some decent spin in the last week, huh? Vrabel to the Pats, as we all expected, strikes me as the kind of move that’s universally popular for a reason. I think he’s a guy. Guess we’ll see. But I’m actually talking about McCarthy being out of Dallas, which I support, amid these rumors that the Cowboys and Deion Sanders are making eyes at each other. Sounds a little silly to me — I’m skeptical that those are real — but if Sanders were to make the NFL leap anywhere, there are definitely places I’d have a harder time imagining than Dallas. Hm. Noted.

🏀 Is Jamal Murray back? Asking for a friend, who wrote skeptically of both the Bucks and Nuggets earlier this year. That seems to have angered them. Whoopsie daisies!

📺 Not all my predictions are that bad, though. Venu Sports, the streaming platform-to-be from ESPN/Fox/WBD is officially dead, as we called out in August. For the second time this week, RIP.

🎾 I am not quite back in the (don’t) swing of things with tennis. It’s hard to watch the Australian Open live when you’re stateside. But I’m about to lock in, and when I do? Look out, country club athletes. I’m coming for the golfers next.

1. This was the write-up from that #27 ranking, by the way: “Darnold is another quarterback we don't have pinned down right now. He started one game last season for the 49ers (a meaningless Week 18 contest), completed 60.9 percent of his passes and threw two touchdown passes for the season, then earned himself a spot elsewhere. J.J. McCarthy might have won this job had he not suffered a season-ending meniscus injury, but now, it's Darnold's to lose. Some folks are making grand predictions for Darnold as this year's renaissance quarterback, but I'm not sold. I've seen too much of Darnold (and his imaginary ghosts) to think a year in San Francisco just fixed him. It would be a fun story, though, and the Vikings don't have a better option right now, so why not see where it goes?” Why not indeed!

2. And this was the write-up from Darnold’s much-improved #5 ranking: “Whether it was the direction of Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell, the 2023 season spent on the bench in San Francisco, or both, Darnold transformed in 2024. He (mostly) ditched his penchant for prematurely feeling pressure and making mistakes, instead trusting his offensive line, his eyes and his arm. In doing so, he guided Minnesota to a 14-3 regular-season record -- far better than the preseason expectations for this Vikings squad. Darnold sped past his own expectations, too, rising from an unknown commodity to a quarterback so valuable, he'll likely attract quite an offer this spring on the open market -- if Minnesota allows him to get there. Nobody saw this coming, and it has been a treat to watch Darnold realize his potential after years of struggles elsewhere.”