Predicting Sam Darnold’s Career Trajectory

Reports indicate that the Vikings are still contemplating bringing QB Sam Darnold back for 2025 and beyond. What can we expect from the passer moving forward?

If the last two games are any indication, the answer would seem to be “not much.” Darnold fell apart when it mattered most en route to blowout losses to the Lions and Rams. 

Still, it is a bit unfair to judge a player on just two games. We fans tend to fixate on late-season and postseason performances because those games are the most important and the most recent, hence also the most memorable.

But postseason performance isn’t necessarily a great predictor of future success due to the small sample sizes—look no further than Jordan Love as an example of a player who posted tremendous playoff performances followed by a year of relative mediocrity.

So, zooming out to the entirety of the 2024 season, there is a lot to like about Sam Darnold.

The journeyman QB played by far the best football of his career and led the team to a 14-3 record. Darnold’s arm strength and aggression found a perfect match in Kevin O’Connell and the Vikings’ dual deep-threat receivers Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison. 

Yet, even a whole NFL season is not necessarily enough to judge a quarterback’s skill. Before the 2024 season, I scoured recent NFL history for QBs like Sam Darnold: first-round draft picks who flamed out with one (or more) teams but got a fresh start as a starter elsewhere.

There aren’t many examples of such QBs—Darnold is just the 7th—but three of those QBs did pull off their best seasons as pros with their new teams: Sam Darnold with the Vikings, Teddy Bridgewater with the Panthers, and Sam Bradford with the Vikings. 

Of course, it’s difficult to draw any definitive conclusions from such a small sample size, but if these comparisons are any sort of guide, one shouldn’t expect Darnold to sustain the unprecedented level of success he displayed in 2024. Both Bridgewater and Bradford declined after an impressive first season with their new teams, and neither ever developed into a franchise QB. 

There is a wide range of possible outcomes for Darnold at this point, but the most likely one is somewhere between Darnold’s 2024 performance and his previous performance with the Jets, Panthers, and 49ers.

Personally, I have no problem with the Vikings spending $40M+ of cap space for QB play on par with 2024 Darnold, but the problem is that there is no guarantee that Darnold will be able to maintain that level of play or that he will be better than sophomore QB J.J. McCarthy.

If the Vikings want to avoid a situation like the Broncos and Falcons—paying big money for a backup/cut QB—they’d be well advised to let Darnold walk.