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

If you waited for Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold to fail this season – not in a bad way schadenfreude sense, but more in the sense of “Oh, there’s the Sam Darnold of old.” Darnold’s performance on Sunday night against Detroit in a 31-9 Lions win gave you a lot of baggage for that position.

Darnold had become one of the NFL’s top stories this season. The New York Jets’ third overall pick in the 2018 draft had three mediocre 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, $10 million deal with the Vikings last offseason to be first-round rookie JJ McCarthy’s backup, but when McCarthy suffered a meniscus in the preseason it was all about Darnold and he responded brilliantly. He proved to be the perfect complement to head coach and offensive shot-caller Kevin O’Connell’s game, which is one of the best and most diverse in the NFL.

From Week 1 through Week 17 of the 2024 season, Darnold was one of the league’s top quarterbacks, completing 343 of 504 passes for 4,153 yards, 35 touchdowns, 12 interceptions and a passer rating of 106.4, which ranked on the ranked fifth in the NFL. higher than Josh Allen, Jayden Daniels, Justin Herbert and Jordan Love, all of whom are rightly considered franchise quarterbacks.

Furthermore, Darnold raised the bar 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. Darnold was not only ideal for what O’Connell wanted to bring to the field, but he also got better at it as time went on.

Then Sunday night’s disaster happened, and now all the comments about Darnold are back in full swing. Against the full-on blitzes and oppressive, claustrophobic coverage of Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, 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 like a young quarterback who would lose himself at that point and literally throw games away.

This was especially true in the red zone against the Lions. Darnold attempted nine passes from or inside Detroit’s seven-yard line in this play, and he completed only one: a quick pass to Aaron Jones running back 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 a lot of that had 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 trying to keep the play afloat, and he simply missed too often on those opportunities.

But now here’s the inevitable question: Does one bad game doom Darnold back to the purgatory of system quarterbacks and career backups?

It’s hard to imagine Thatbecause what the Lions did to Darnold were all things you shouldn’t do to him, and they were all things 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 by 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. By all accounts, Darnold had been the NFL’s best quarterback against the blitz this season, and he had been in Week 7, when the Lions blew him on 20 of his 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 were one of the blitziest teams in the league before this game – with just four pass rushers on 64% of their defensive snaps, one of the lowest marks in the league – and this was simply an example of taking what you do well in, and turn up the volume.

• On Sunday night, the Lions played man coverage against Darnold to an extreme degree – on a whopping 66.6% of his attempts. That’s even excessive for Detroit, who entered that game with the highest percentage of men in the NFL at 44.1%. By Week 17, 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 often, and just doing it better And more often.

• As for the red zone mistakes, they probably won’t last long. Certainly not to this extreme. Through Week 17, when he threw from 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 faced a Lions defense that led the league (and still will, of course) by allowing a 42% completion percentage 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 little… upset.

So again, the Lions already played this setlist; they just had to buy a few more amplifiers and speakers for their graduation from Hammersmith Odeon to Wembley Stadium.

That’s exactly what they did.

In this game, the Vikings were the only NFL team in at least the past 30 years to failing to score a touchdown in four red-zone trips, three goal-to-go attempts and two fourth-and-goal attempts in one game. So there is also the outlier element here; you wouldn’t expect this to happen again for a while with a quarterback, especially one who has played as well as Darnold has overall this season.

What does this horrific series of moments say about Sam Darnold’s future? Most likely, when the total comes out, it will be a real stinker in a list of games in which Darnold reclaimed an NFL career that seemed lost to him. All he can do now is 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 often as the Lions, and don’t play man coverage as often as the Lions. do, and generally aren’t as much of a problem for opposing quarterbacks in the red zone as the Lions are.

If the Vikings and Lions meet again in the postseason, that will be the real litmus test. How can Darnold ignore not just this one unfortunate play, but everything people might think that unfortunate play really says about him, and the opponent who made him look so bad? If he can accomplish that, or help the Vikings make a deep playoff or Super Bowl run, with or without another Lions game, maybe those rumors will finally die down.

Then the Vikings can deal with the specter of what to do with Darnold, who will be a free agent in the 2025 league year. And Darnold can continue to prove that there’s more transportation than pumpkin in his future.