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.
From Week 1 through Week 17 of the 2024 season, Darnold was one of the league’s best quarterbacks, completing 343 of 504 passes for 4,153 yards, 35 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, and a passer rating of 106.4 that ranked fifth-best in the NFL – higher than Josh Allen, Jayden Daniels, Justin Herbert and Jordan Love, who are all rightly considered franchise quarterbacks.
Moreover, Darnold upped the ante in the second half of the season. From Week 11 through Week 17, Darnold completed 164 of 243 passes for 2,012 yards, 18 touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 114.1, which ranked fourth in the NFL behind Jared Goff, Lamar Jackson and Baker Mayfield. Not only was Darnold ideal for what O’Connell wanted to bring to the field, but he was getting better and better with it as time went along.
Then Sunday night’s disaster happened, and now, all the caveats about Darnold are back in full swing. Against Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn’s full-on blitzes and oppressive, claustrophobic coverage, Darnold completed just 18 of 41 passes for 166 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating of 55.5. It was Darnold’s worst game of the season, and he looked every bit the young quarterback who would lose himself in the moment and literally throw games away.
This was especially true in the red zone against the Lions. Darnold attempted nine passes from at or inside Detroit’s seven-yard line in this game, and he completed just one – a quick pass to running back Aaron Jones for three yards from the five-yard line. Darnold was uncomfortable both in and out of the pocket when there were touchdowns to be had, and that had a lot to do with Glenn’s brilliant variance between pressure and man/disguised coverage. When Darnold had open receivers in those compressed areas, Darnold was too busy running around to keep the play afloat, and he simply missed too often with those opportunities.
Thought Sam (uncharacteristically this season) missed 5 TDs for @Vikings pic.twitter.com/vMWt1AtdpD
— Dan Orlovsky (@danorlovsky7) January 6, 2025
But here’s the inevitable question now: Does one bad game damn Darnold back to the purgatory of system quarterbacks and career backups?
It’s hard to imagine that, because what the Lions did to Darnold were all the things you’re not supposed to do against him, and they were all things that the Lions were uniquely qualified to execute.
The Lions sent five or more pass-rushers on 25 of Darnold’s 45 dropbacks. He was 10 of 23 against the blitz for 122 yards, and a passer rating of 60.4. But against the blitz from Week 1 through Week 17, Darnold had completed 62 of 87 passes for 896 yards, 11 touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 144.0. For all intents and purposes, Darnold had been the NFL’s best quarterback against the blitz this season, and he had been so in Week 7, when the Lions blitzed him on 20 of hs 35 dropbacks, and Darnold completed 12 of 15 passes against it for 143 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and a passer rating of 100.8. The Lions had been one of the league’s blitziest teams before this game – using just four pass-rushers on 64% of their defensive snaps, one of the lowest rates in the league – and this was simply an example of taking what you do well, and turning up the volume.
On Sunday night, the Lions played man coverage against Darnold to an extreme degree – on a full 66.6% of his attempts. That’s excessive even for Detroit, who came into that game with the NFL’s highest rate of man coverage at 44.1%. Through Week 17, when facing man coverage, Darnold had completed 76 of 118 passes for 1,068 yards, 11 touchdowns, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 113.5. Again, this was an example of the Lions doing what they already did well and frequently, and simply doing it better and more frequently.
As for the red zone foul-ups, they’re not likely to endure. Certainly not to this extreme. Through Week 17, when throwing from at or inside the opponent’s 10-yard line, Darnold had completed 30 of 39 passes for 147 yards, 20 touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 110.8. The problem was, he was facing a Lions defense that led the league (and still will, of course), by allowing a 42% completion rate and a 73.4 passer rating in the red zone. This also tells you that when a quarterback attempted 39 such passes in his first 16 games, and nine in the 17th, the balance between run and pass was a bit … off.
So, once again, the Lions were already playing this set list; they just had to get a few more amplifiers and loudspeakers for their graduation from Hammersmith Odeon to Wembley Stadium.
Which is exactly what they did.
In this game, the Vikings were the only NFL team in at least the last 30 years to fail to score a touchdown in four red-zone trips, three goal-to-go attempts, and two fourth-and-goal attempts in a single game. So, there’s the outlier element here, as well; you would not expect this to happen again for a while to any quarterback, especially one who has played as well as Darnold has this season overall.
What does this horrid series of moments say about Sam Darnold’s future? Most likely, when the sum total comes out, it will be one real stinker in a list of games in which Darnold reclaimed an NFL career that appeared to be lost to him. All he can do now it throw off the yoke of this particular failure and prepare for a wild-card opponent in the Los Angeles Rams who don’t blitz as much as the Lions do, don’t play man coverage as much as the Lions do, and aren’t generally as much of a problem for opposing quarterbacks in the red zone as the Lions are.
If the Vikings and Lions do meet again in the postseason, that will be the real litmus test. How can Darnold move past not only this one unfortunate game, but all the things people may think that unfortunate game really says about him, and the opponent that made him look that bad? If he’s able to accomplish that, or help the Vikings to a deep playoff or Super Bowl run with or without another Lions game, perhaps those whispers will finally go away.
Then the Vikings can deal with the specter of what they should do with Darnold, who will be a free agent in the 2025 league year. And Darnold can continue to prove that there’s more carriage than pumpkin in his future.
