A little more than a year after Sam Darnold turned his NFL career around with the Minnesota Vikings, the world watched him help the Seattle Seahawks emerge victorious over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60 on Sunday.
Darnold leading the Seahawks to a Super Bowl win in his first season with the team clearly isn't what anyone from the Vikings thought would happen when they let him walk in free agency last March.
But that's the problem.
Minnesota hired Kevin O'Connell as its head coach in 2022 to find the team a franchise quarterback. O'Connell has failed to do that in his tenure with the Vikings, and his inability to recognize Darnold as one is something that should cost him his job.
How can the Minnesota Vikings trust Kevin O'Connell moving forward?
After taking multiple approaches at the quarterback position that all failed during the Mike Zimmer era, O'Connell was supposed to be the guy who solved the franchise's never-ending dilemma under center.
Instead, he's just added more chapters to a story that Vikings fans are tired of reading.
If O'Connell is unable to find the right quarterback for Minnesota, then what is the point of keeping him around? He literally had one who just proved he is capable of leading a team to a Super Bowl win, and he had no problem letting him walk right out the door.
Is there some recency bias mixed in with the thought that the Vikings should fire O'Connell? Sure, just about everyone was fine with Minnesota moving on from Darnold last offseason and giving the starting signal-caller job to J.J. McCarthy.
However, if O'Connell was the so-called quarterback whisperer that many claim he is, then he would've pounded the table for the Vikings to keep Darnold around for at least one more season. But he didn't, and instead, all Minnesota's owners will hear about over the next few months is how their team made the gigantic mistake of moving on from Darnold.
Now that the Vikings are going to be without a general manager until after this year's NFL Draft, after recently firing Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, O'Connell is expected to have more of a say in roster decisions during the next several months.
Why should anyone feel confident about this?
Why should anyone trust O'Connell to pick the right quarterback this offseason who can lead Minnesota to its first playoff win since 2019?
During the 2025 season, he proved, once again (check his coaching history), that he's incapable of developing a young quarterback, and he proved during the offseason that he didn't know how to properly evaluate Darnold's future.
So, we're just supposed to assume things will be different this offseason?
The Vikings clearly believe this, which is incredibly foolish. But maybe we shouldn't be surprised from an ownership group that has only witnessed three playoff wins since buying the team in 2005.