Kevin O'Connell deserves benefit of the doubt when it comes to his decision on Sam Darnold or J.J. McCarthy
While Vikings fans are concerned the team will move on from Darnold after this season, O'Connell has proven he's able to develop and get the most out of his quarterbacks.
There is one thing we know about Sam Darnold’s relationship with the Vikings: It wasn’t meant to be long term. The veteran signed a one-year, $10 million deal last March to serve as the starter for a season before turning over the job to a first-round quarterback who wasn’t even on the roster at that point.
That player turned out to be J.J. McCarthy, who was selected with the 10th pick in the April draft but suffered a season-ending torn meniscus in his right knee during an impressive performance in the Vikings’ exhibition opener against the Las Vegas Raiders.
McCarthy’s injury assured Darnold of the starting job with the hope he would play well enough to draw interest from other teams on the free agent market after the season. This looked like a potential win-win for all sides, including Vikings general manger Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, coach Kevin O’Connell and Darnold.
What they couldn’t have foreseen was how much the Vikings would win. They also couldn’t have forecasted that Darnold would play such a huge role in the Vikings’ success, going from failed journeyman to MVP candidate for a team that is 14-2 with one game left in the regular season.
Darnold’s latest masterpiece came in a 27-25 victory over the Green Bay Packers on Sunday as he completed 33 of 43 passes for a career-high 377 yards with three touchdowns, an interception and a 116.1 passer rating. Darnold is third in the NFL in passing yards (4,153), fourth in yards per pass attempt (8.2), fourth in touchdown passes (35) and fifth in passer rating (106.4).
His 13 games with a 100-plus passer rating are tied for the second-most in a single season since 1950, trailing only Aaron Rodgers’ 14 games set in his 2020 MVP season with the Packers. Darnold has a chance to tie that mark when the Vikings play Detroit on Sunday night at Ford Field.
That game will decide whether the Vikings or Lions win the NFC North and get the top seed in the NFC, meaning a bye in the first round and home field throughout the playoffs.
Darnold’s success has many Vikings fans convinced the team has no choice but to bring him back and either keep McCarthy’s career on hold or deal him for a high draft pick.
But only one decision will matter and that will be the one that comes from inside Vikings headquarters in Eagan. The question is: Has that decision been made, or will it depend on how the Vikings do in the postseason?
Quarterback conundrums are nothing new for the team’s brass, but usually they result from botching a situation and then hoping it can be fixed. This time the Vikings will be faced with a situation that is unlikely to be met with universal approval but is the result of their competence instead of their ineptitude.
It came as no surprise that as the Vikings prepared to face the Packers on Sunday in a game that was nationally televised by FOX, some of the heavy hitters among the national media began to report that the Vikings want Darnold back in 2025.
This, of course, is all part of the game that gets played before decisions have to be made. Last February, the Vikings made sure they were on the same page in saying they wanted to retain quarterback Kirk Cousins, despite the fact he had suffered a season-ending Achilles’ injury in Week 8.
O’Connell, a former NFL backup quarterback, did excellent work in getting the most out of Cousins, but that doesn’t come close to what he’s done with Darnold. The third-overall pick in the 2018 draft by the Jets, Darnold has gone from colossal failure to one of the best NFL stories in 2024.
Even if the Vikings aren’t sure about their future plans for Darnold, no one inside the organization is going to come out now, even off the record, and volunteer that they likely don’t plan on keeping him around.