Kevin O’Connell already revealed Vikings QB plans for Week 11

The Minnesota Vikings beat the Jacksonville Jaguars and moved to 7-2 on the year. One would think that'd be enough to celebrate, right?

Wrong.

The Vikings offense struggled mightily in the narrow victory, only scoring 12 points while Sam Darnold threw three interceptions and finished with a quarterback rating of 48.2. The three picks made it official that Darnold is now the NFL leader in turnovers with 13 on his résumé. Even with the Vikings quarterback having a rough outing on Sunday, head coach Kevin O'Connell continued to back Darnold, stating that "it would be craziness not to" have confidence in his quarterback.

Kevin O'Connell is sticking with Sam Darnold despite rough Week 10 outing

While it was frustrating watching Darnold struggle on Sunday, Vikings fans knew there'd be games like this from their quarterback when he was officially named the starter. He's a former first-round bust who struggled with the other two teams who gave him a chance to start so naturally, we knew those problems would still plague him despite being on a new team.

The good news is that the defense has been fantastic this year and kept Minnesota afloat in this one despite the bad performance from Darnold. Scoring 12 points is typically not going to be a way to get a victory but the defense was able to shut the Jaguars offense down. Unfortunately, the Vikings don't get to play the Mac Jones-led Jaguars every week. They're going to need more from Darnold and the offense if this team wants to go anywhere in 2024.

That being said, it's not crazy to see O'Connell back his quarterback. First and foremost, that's his job as the coach to encourage his players. Secondly, there's nothing worth getting excited about behind Darnold on the depth chart and O'Connell knows that.

If the Vikings were going to make a change at quarterback, their options would be Nick Mullens and Brett Rypien, who has served as the emergency third-string signal-caller throughout the season. Do either of those options sound appealing? Exactly. We saw the Mullens experiment a year ago and it's not an experiment that we need to start up again. Rypien also isn't the answer.

Maybe this conversation would be different if J.J. McCarthy was healthy but we all know that he's not an option to play this year. It's Darnold or bust for the rest of the year and that's honestly the correct call here.