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The Minnesota Vikings saw one of their best seasons in franchise history come crashing down in a blink this season. After Week 17, the Vikings were 14-2 and playing for the No. 1 seed in the NFC and the NFC North title, but two straight blowout losses to the Detroit Lions in Week 18 and the Los Angeles Rams in the Wild Card Round of the playoffs sent them home early.
Quarterback Sam Darnold was at the center of both the Vikings’ rise and their collapse. He played the best football of his career for 16 games to get them to that Week 18 clash in Detroit, but he looked too much like his old self (in a bad way) in the two losses to end Minnesota’s season. Now, the Vikings have a very difficult decision to make with Darnold, who is a free agent this offseason.
Despite the uncertainty, Darnold isn’t rushing anything as the offseason gets underway, according to Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk.
“I’ve put a little bit of thought into it,” Darnold said, per Alper. “I’m not gonna share anything about what I’ve been thinking or the conversations I’ve had behind closed doors. There’s obviously a lot that’s gonna happen still, even after the Super Bowl. Just going to continue to talk to my agent and figure things out from there.”
Sam Darnold was great for the Vikings for most of this season, but the last two games showed why Minnesota needs to roll with the young guy in 2025 and let Darnold walk in free agency. J.J. McCarthy gives the Vikings a younger, cheaper option that will allow them to have the financial flexibility to keep improving the roster around him.
It may be unfair to judge Darnold based on just two games, but the Vikings showed that they have a team that is capable of competing for a championship. In the two biggest games of the season, Darnold went back into his shell and was missing open throws, not seeing open receivers and taking drive-killing sacks.
With the way that their team is set up, the Vikings cannot take the chance of that happening again. McCarthy may be a slight step back overall from what Darnold gave them last season, especially at the start of his career, but Kevin O’Connell has shown that he can make life easy for his quarterback and lean on his stars for production.
Plus, McCarthy is still a very young and talented player even after missing his entire rookie season due to a knee injury. If he can come into his own quickly and build the same level of comfort in O’Connell’s scheme that he had at Michigan, this offense could pick up right where it left off last season.
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