Darnold needs to perform to avoid being franchised, or worse.
The Minnesota Vikings’ matchup with the Detroit Lions in Week 18 was the regular season Super Bowl for both teams. Home field advantage in the playoffs, the critical bye, and the NFC North title were on the line — and like so many times in the team’s past, when the lights shone brightest, Minnesota faltered.
It felt like history repeating once more, and at the center of it all was a quarterback in purple. Sam Darnold, the Vikings’ unexpected hero of 2024, had his worst performance of the season when something was on the line. Normally steadfast in the pocket, Darnold wasn’t only blitzed out of his shoes by an aggressive Cover 0 defense from Aaron Glenn — but more worrying was the instances where Darnold responded to perceived pressure when it didn’t exist. It brought back shades of his early days with the New York Jets when Darnold infamously said “I’m seeing ghosts,” in response to the pressure he was facing.
The result was abysmal. Minnesota lost 31-9, Darnold attempted 41 passes for a paltry 166 yards, and not even two uncharacteristic interceptions from Jared Goff were enough to help the Vikings make this game competitive. Fans joked that Darnold cost himself tens-of-millions of dollars that night, and they’re not entirely wrong.
Darnold is on pace to be one of the hottest commodities in an incredibly weak quarterback pool. Numerous teams are in dire need of a signal caller, but a weak draft class, coupled with a shallow free agent group meant that Darnold had gone from being an NFL cast-off, to now potentially making upwards of $40M a season. While there’s no doubt he’s still going to get paid, the nature of things had changed a lot — and it may come down to how Darnold performs against the Los Angeles Rams on Monday night.
Darnold will need to perform in order to have any hopes of being Minnesota’s QB in the future. No playoff game is inconsequential, but this Wild Card round has an existential element to Darnold’s future as a starting quarterback.
Sam Darnold, the new Kirk Cousins?
It’s impossible to avoid comparisons between Darnold and the quarterback he replaced in Kirk Cousins. The shared DNA of these two passers appears to be astounding regular season success, but problems when games get important.
This has marred Cousins’ career, where he’s routinely been one of the league’s best passers from Week 1 to Week 18, but then totally collapsed when things were on the line. That’s why Darnold’s struggles against the Lions hit a little too close to home, and why the sentiment around Darnold pivoted quickly from “Re-sign him like the Buccaneers did with Baker Mayfield,” to “Maybe just franchise tag him.”
There is considerable worry that Darnold won’t have the sustained success that Mayfield was able to replicate in Tampa. The worry that the clock has struck midnight and Darnold is ready to turn back into a pumpkin. That this is a memorable blip on the radar, and nothing more.
The sheer offensive brilliance of head coach Kevin O’Connell and coordinator Wes Phillips compounds these concerns. There is a tangible feeling that the success Darnold had was a product of scheme and system rather than anything uniquely special about the player himself. After all, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and throws for 4,000 yards like your old duck, perhaps you’re just really good at raising ducks.
J.J. McCarthy is still waiting in the wings
Sam Darnold was never meant to be a long-term solution in Minnesota. The team was in dire need of a veteran QB to steady the ship and buy time for the organization to develop J.J. McCarthy, whom the team not only drafted with the No. 10 pick, but traded up for him. Going into the season there was belief that McCarthy would likely take over for the back-third of the season after sitting and learning, but injury took that away.
McCarthy’s presence on the team still exists, independent of anything Darnold has done in 2024. The question is whether he showed enough in training camp and practice prior to his injury to give the Vikings faith that he could still be “the guy” when he gets healthy.
Another wrinkle to this is a potential trade scenario. ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. is already proposing a scenario where the Vikings trade McCarthy to the Giants for the No. 3 overall pick, allowing the team to get much-needed help for their secondary, potentially even landing Heisman-winner Travis Hunter, while New York gets a QB to build around.
“J.J. McCarthy is a year younger than Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders. He’s coming off the injury, but he’s a kid if you look at his grade last year compared to this year with the quarterbacks, he’d be the No. 1 guy, he’d be ahead of Drew Allar, he’d be certainly ahead of Cam and Shedeur.”
All of this depends on what Darnold can do in the playoffs, and that hinges on the Wild Card round to start.
What would Darnold need to do in, and what are the outcomes?
It’s here where we get some wild swings. There’s no question that the Vikings have their own benchmarks of how to proceed, but these are the ways the future at QB for the Vikings could play out depending on the result of the playoffs.
- Loss to the Rams in the Wild Card: Vikings keep McCarthy and pivot to him in 2025.
- Loss in the Divisional Round: Franchise tag for Darnold, keep McCarthy as insurance
- Loss in the NFC Championship: Try to work a short-term deal with escalators for Darnold. Potential trade McCarthy.
- Make the Super Bowl: Long-term, big-money contract for Darnold. Trade McCarthy.
There is a certain level of success where the Vikings can’t possibly get rid of Darnold from the PR standpoint. If he’s able to lead the team to success that Kirk Cousins couldn’t then there is no doubt they will make him their signal called long-term.
The situation isn’t nearly as complicated for the Vikings that it might seem on the surface. If they perform in the playoffs then Darnold is their guy, and if he doesn’t they’ll move on — or simply franchise him. In fact, the Vikings are in one of the better positions in the NFL when it comes to quarterback, where they have options regardless of the outcome.
For Sam Darnold though, he needs to come through when it matters the most if he wants to solidify himself as the starter in Minnesota.
