Sam Darnold turned into a pumpkin on Sunday. But he can still be Cinderella | Minnesota Vikings

If you've been waiting for Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold to fail this season, it's not a bad thing. schadenfreude That means, “Oh, that's the old Sam Darnold,'' but Darnold's performance in the Lions' 31-9 win over Detroit on Sunday night was a huge boost to the position.

Darnold has been one of the NFL's best storylines this season. Selected third overall in the 2018 draft by the New York Jets, he spent three middling seasons with his former team, two more seasons with the Carolina Panthers in 2021 and 2022, and a season in 2023. He played a backup role with the San Francisco 49ers. Darnold signed a $10 million contract with the Vikings this offseason to be the backup to first-round rookie JJ McCarthy, but when McCarthy struggled with his turn and tore his meniscus in the preseason, it all fell on Darnold. But he responded perfectly. He proved to be the perfect foil to head coach and offensive shot caller Kevin O'Connell's game. This game is one of the NFL's best and most diverse.

From Week 1 to Week 17 of the 2024 season, Darnold was one of the best quarterbacks in the league, completing 343 of 504 passes for 4,153 yards, 35 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions. , his passer rating of 106.4 ranked fifth in the NFL. That's higher than Josh Allen, Jaden Daniels, Justin Herbert, and Jordan Love. He is rightly regarded as a franchise quarterback.

Additionally, Darnold improved even more in the second half of the season. From Weeks 11 to 17, Darnold completed 164 of 243 passes for 2,012 yards, 18 touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 114.1, leading the way for Jared Goff, Lamar Jackson, and Baker Mayfield. Ranked 4th in the NFL behind . Not only was Darnold ideal for what O'Connell wanted to bring to the field, but he got better at it over time.

Then Sunday night's disaster happened, and now all the warnings about Darnold are in full swing. Against Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn's all-out blitzes and oppressive, claustrophobic coverage, Darnold completed just 18 of 41 passes for 166 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions, and a 55.5 passer rating. It was. It was Darnold's worst game of the season, and he looked everywhere like a young quarterback who could lose himself in a second and literally throw the game away.

This was especially true in the red zone against the Lions. In the game, Darnold attempted nine passes from either inside Detroit's 7-yard line or inside his own 7-yard line, but completed just one: a 3-yard pass to running back Aaron Jones from the 5-yard line. It was a quick pass. Darnold was uncomfortable in and out of the pocket when he needed a touchdown, but that had a lot to do with Glenn's masterful transition between pressure and man/fake coverage. When Darnold had an open receiver in a compressed area, Darnold was too busy running around to sustain the play and simply missed too many of those opportunities.

However, there is an unavoidable question here. Will one bad game send Darnold back to the purgatory of being a system quarterback or a career backup?

hard to imagine thatBecause everything the Lions did to Darnold was something they shouldn't have done to Darnold, and they were all things the Lions were entitled to do on their own.

• The Lions sent pass rushers with five or more on 25 of Darnold's 45 dropbacks. He went 10 of 23 for 122 yards and a passer rating of 60.4 against the Blitz. But in the blitz from Weeks 1 to 17, Darnold completed 62 of 87 passes for 896 yards, 11 touchdowns, no interceptions, and a 144.0 passer rating. No matter how you look at it, Darnold was the best quarterback in the NFL against the Blitz this season. That was the case in week 7 as well. The Lions blitzed on 20 of 35 dropbacks, and Darnold completed 12 of 15 passes against the blitz. 143 yards, 1 touchdown, 1 interception, 100.8 passer rating. Prior to this game, the Lions were one of the league's most blitz teams – using just four pass rushers on 64% of their defensive snaps, one of the lowest rates in the league – and This was just an example of us taking what we do best. And turn up the volume.

• On Sunday night, the Lions took Darnold to extremes in man coverage, completing 66.6% of his attempts. That's excessive even for Detroit, which entered that game with an NFL-best man coverage rate of 44.1%. When facing man coverage through Week 17, Darnold 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 something they already do well often and simply doing it. better and more Frequently.

• As for foul-ups in the red zone, it doesn't seem to hold up. It's certainly not this extreme. Through Week 17, Darnold completed 30-of-39 passes for 147 yards, 20 touchdowns, one interception, and a 110.8 passer rating when throwing from inside the opponent's 10-yard line or inside his own 10-yard line. . The problem was that they were facing a Lions defense that was (and will always be) among the league's best, allowing a 42% success rate in the red zone and a 73.4 passer rating. It also shows that the balance between the run and pass was a little off as the quarterback attempted 39 such passes in the first 16 games and nine in the 17th game.

So, again, the Lions were already playing this setlist. For the graduation from Hammersmith Odeon to Wembley Stadium, we needed a few more amplifiers and speakers.

That's exactly what they did.

The Vikings were the only NFL team in this game. at least for the past 30 years He failed to score a touchdown on four red zone trips, three goal-to-go attempts, and two fourth-goal attempts in one game. So there's an element of outliers here as well. You wouldn't expect something like this to happen again for any quarterback, especially one who has played as well as Darnold this entire season.

What does this horrifying series of moments say about Sam Darnold's future?Perhaps, once the sum total is known, it's on a list of games in which Darnold regained an NFL career that seemed lost. It's going to be a really tough match. All he can do now is shake off the yoke of failure and prepare for a wild-card opponent in the Los Angeles Rams, who don't blitz as well as the Lions and don't have as much man coverage as the Lions. That's not as much of an issue for opposing quarterbacks in the red zone as it is for the Lions.

If the Vikings and Lions meet again in the postseason, it will be a real litmus test. Darnold is going to talk about not just this unlucky game, but everything that people might think that unlucky game actually says about him, and how he gets over the opponents that made him look so bad. Is it possible? If he can accomplish that, or if he can help the Vikings get deep into the playoffs or into the Super Bowl, with or without another game against the Lions, perhaps those whispers will finally die down. Dew.

That would allow the Vikings to address the uncertainty of what to do with Darnold, who will be a free agent in the 2025 league year. And Darnold can continue to prove there are more horse-drawn carriages than pumpkins in the future.