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Sam Darnold and the Vikings had a great start to the season against the Giants, but is it sustainable?
The point of the ‘QB of the Week’ series is not just to identify the quarterback who had the best game of the week (the NFL has awards for that), but to give credit where credit is due to a player who surprises us, wows us, overcomes the odds, battles back from injury or from the bottom of a depth chart — someone who really makes you think, “Man, that guy’s having a great week!”
And in Week 1, Sam Darnold checked off several of those boxes against the New York Giants.
Every offseason, there is a former starting quarterback who hits the market as a backup but gets the hype that he will excel if given the chance to play again in the right system.
In 2022, that player was Mitchell Trubisky. Having lost his starting job with the Bears in 2020, Trubisky spent the 2021 season on the Bills bench behind Josh Allen. He only played 33 snaps all year—and still managed to throw an interception—but somehow there were rumors that the former second overall pick would be a hot commodity on the free agent market because of what he had “learned” from sitting behind Allen. Sure enough, the Steelers gave Trubisky a free $5 million in guaranteed money to keep the seat warm for Kenny Pickett, a job he managed to hold for all of four weeks prior to being benched at the end of a three-game losing streak.
I bring up Trubisky’s story as a frame of reference for what almost always happens to quarterbacks like Darnold, the “former bust who gets a another chance to start for a team because he still possesses the unique tools that got him drafted” and hope springs eternal with coaches who believe they can do what those other organizations couldn’t.
Except that in Darnold’s case, between Kevin O’Connell and Justin Jefferson and Christian Darrisaw, maybe he actually does have the coaching staff and supporting cast that could help him avoid flopping in the middle of the season, as happened in previous stops with the New York Jets and Carolina Panthers. After spending one year on the 49ers’ bench behind Brock Purdy, Darnold made his Vikings debut on Sunday and went 19-of-24 for 208 yards with two touchdowns and an interception, beating the Giants 28-6.
Of course, playing against the New York Giants in your debut doesn’t hurt either. As if we needed a sneak peek at the NFL’s script this year, Darnold faces the 49ers in Week 2 and the Jets in Week 5, with stops against the Texans and Packers in between.
At times, QB of the Week will try to highlight a quarterback who might not give us another chance to do so all season. And in that way, Darnold is also qualified to win the Week 1 award.
Play it again, Sam
In his NFL debut with the Jets in 2018, a Week 1 start against the Lions in Detroit (way before that was a terrifying thought) on Monday Night Football, Darnold went 16-of-21 for 198 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. Almost identical to his debut with the Vikings.
Without rehashing all of the details of what transpired over the next three years, Darnold was bad enough to be replaced by Zach Wilson in 2021, but still had good games along the way, including winning Offensive Player of the Week following a Week 6 win over the Cowboys in 2019. After seeing too many “ghosts”, Darnold was traded to the Panthers with the intention to be Carolina’s franchise quarterback and his debut there wasn’t bad either. The Panthers started 3-0 with Darnold and he had a passer rating of 99 with six total touchdowns in those games. But he would eventually lose playing time to P.J. Walker and Cam Newton in 2021, until eventually becoming QB3 behind Baker Mayfield and Walker in 2022.
Even then, Darnold had a passer rating of 105.4 with 7 touchdowns and only one interception over a five-game span in 2022. Good games have always followed Sam Darnold wherever he goes. It’s good seasons that have always evaded him.
Will that change in Minnesota with a better offensive line, better weapons, and better offensive coaching than he’s ever had in his career before?
We really baited Sean Payton into drafting Bo Nix instead of signing Sam Darnold
— Janik Eckardt (@JanikEckardt) September 8, 2024
In his words
Sam Darnold said after the game that he wasn’t satisfied with just one win, which is what you’d want to hear from a quarterback who has never been able to sustain success for longer than a few weeks at a time.
“It’s always great to get a win. That’s the biggest thing,” he said. “It’s always great to get a win, whether it’s Week 1 or Week 12. We’re happy with it, but we’re not satisfied.”
“Next week”
With J.J. McCarthy on IR for the rest of the year with a knee injury, Darnold will not have that quarterback behind him breathing down his neck like was basically the intention when the Vikings signed him and then used a top-10 pick on a quarterback. If McCarthy was healthy, Week 1’s game would have done nothing to dissuade Minnesota from going to the rookie at some point if Darnold struggles.
However, the backups behind Darnold now are Nick Mullens and Brett Rypien, two quarterbacks who Kevin O’Connell wouldn’t dream of starting unless his starter was too hurt to play. For that reason, Darnold should be able to get 17 starts this season as long as he’s healthy, something he has never done in his career (Darnold’s career-high is 13 starts). He has one of the best offensive lines in football, the best receiver, a really good No. 2 when Jordan Addison is healthy, one of the top running backs in Aaron Jones, and the Vikings are eyeing a midseason return for tight end T.J. Hockenson.
Sam Darnold is out of excuses. Can he keep the ghosts and the skeletons in the closet through Halloween this time?
