The Minnesota Vikings had an eventful offseason, and a big reason was the quarterback position.
While the Vikings signed Kyler Murray to be their starter for the September 13 opener against the Green Bay Packers, J.J. McCarthy’s latest injury mystery has created more headlines, and it leaves some longing for Sam Darnold.
Darnold left the Vikings in free agency one year ago, and many younger fans see it as their version of the Herschel Walker trade.
The image of Darnold being raised on his teammates' shoulders in the locker room after beating the Packers late in the 2024 season has once again gone viral ahead of this season, and many believe that if Darnold had stayed, Minnesota could have contended for a Super Bowl last year and set them up for success in future years.
But the Vikings wouldn’t have lived happier ever after had they kept Darnold, and it also wouldn’t have saved Minnesota from what happened a year ago.
Sam Darnold wouldn’t have saved the 2025 Minnesota Vikings
It’s easy for Vikings fans to talk themselves into Darnold saving them in 2025. McCarthy was coming off a torn meniscus, and signing Darnold to the three-year, $100.5 million contract he agreed to with the Seattle Seahawks would have been a solid bridge until McCarthy was ready to contribute.
Instead, McCarthy flopped as a starter, and his injuries led to Carson Wentz and Max Brosmer trying to fill Darnold’s shoes.
Winning a Super Bowl with the Seahawks didn’t help fans who were tortured by a lost (but winning!) season, and it makes Vikings fans believe there were a couple of losses that would have turned into victories if Darnold had stayed in Minnesota.
But that theory ignores some of the problems the Vikings had outside of the quarterback position.
While O’Connell’s passing offense would have been significantly better with Darnold, it wouldn’t have been backed by the running game that Darnold had with Kenneth Walker III and Zach Charbonnet in Seattle.
An injury to Ryan Kelly would have been a problem for a quarterback who struggled with interior pressure at the end of the 2024 campaign, and having Christian Darrisaw, Will Fries, and Brian O’Neill at less than 100 percent would have presented another problem for a prototypical pocket passer.
That wasn’t the only problem Darnold would have dealt with. Jordan Addison’s three-game suspension was still imminent, and while Justin Jefferson would have had better numbers, there still wasn’t anyone to draw heat away from him.
Jalen Nailor was a marginal player at the WR3 position last year, but Darnold never established chemistry with T.J. Hockenson in 2024, leading to a similar result with two premier pass-catchers.
In honesty, a lot of the names from the 2024 season, when Darnold led the Vikings to 14 wins and a shot at home-field advantage, were the same.
But they were in a much different situation last season. While it’s easy to see an extra win or two, it likely would have been a quick dismissal at the hands of the Los Angeles Rams or the Seahawks (even with a different quarterback), and an interesting scenario for the future.
Sam Darnold was not the answer to the Minnesota Vikings problems
If Darnold led the Vikings to 11 or 12 wins, there’s a good chance the issues between O’Connell and Adofo-Mensah would have been swept under the rug.
If Adofo-Mensah stayed, it would have subjected the Vikings to another poor draft, leaving Darnold with a significantly weaker supporting cast than the one he enjoyed in Seattle.
Darnold’s contract would also need to be re-done at some point, leaving him with a massive salary that Adofo-Mensah and his staff would have had to have found cheap talent to build around.
While Adofo-Mensah’s work in free agency during the 2024 season would have helped, the 2025 season showed it’s not a sustainable strategy, bringing in several lemons.
While some fans look back to the Kirk Cousins era with fondness, it was also a never-ending vortex where the Vikings had stability at quarterback but could never put the pieces around him.
Jefferson’s voyage into his 30s would create a problem, and so would the salary cap, which would see several key players leave in the same way that Jonathan Greenard was traded last spring.
Perhaps this is some coping after the Vikings made one of the worst quarterback decisions in the history of the NFL. That’s saying something because few teams have screwed up the quarterback position more than the Vikings.
But Darnold wasn’t the savior that many thought he would be, and it’s why many fans wanted him on the first flight out of town after the Detroit Lions and Rams pounded him into the turf in succession to the end of the 2024 season.
It’s also okay to admit that everyone was wrong about Darnold leaving, as Adofo-Mensah’s roster-building plan centered around drafting a young quarterback and building around him.
The plan got foiled when draft picks were lit on fire, and the result is fans digging up a video that was posted nearly two years ago.
Such a move is par for a fan base that has resorted to pity farming when things don’t go their way. But keeping Darnold wouldn’t have given the Vikings a happy ending, and the best thing is to move forward.
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