Sam Darnold turned into a pumpkin on Sunday. But he can still be Cinderella
The Vikings’ surprise package was one of the NFL best quarterbacks all season long until Sunday night’s stinker in Detroit. Was it an anomaly or regression to the norm?
If you were waiting this season for Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold to fail – not in an evil schadenfreude sense, but more in an “Oh, there’s the Sam Darnold of old” sense – then Darnold’s Sunday night performance against Detroit in a 31-9 Lions win gave you a lot of ballast for that position.
Darnold had become one of the NFL’s best stories this season. The third overall pick by the New York Jets in the 2018 draft had three middling seasons with his original team, two more with the Carolina Panthers in 2021 and 2022, and a backup role with the San Francisco 49ers in 2023. He signed a one-year, $10m deal with the Vikings this past offseason to be first-round rookie JJ McCarthy’s backup, but when McCarthy suffered a turn meniscus in the preseason, it was all on Darnold and he responded brilliantly. He proved to be the perfect foil for head coach and offensive shot-caller Kevin O’Connell’s game, which is one of the NFL’s best and most diverse.
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