The explanations are both tiresome and unsatisfactory. The 14-3 Minnesota Vikings were annihilated, 27-9, in their opening playoff game Monday night against Los Angeles Rams. Two weeks ago, Minnesota was a lone victory away from securing the No. 1 seed in the NFC and the attendant boost in DVOA Super Bowl odds that would come with it. The Vikings had one of the best defenses in the NFL. They had Justin Jefferson. They weren’t supposed to be this good, but they were as legit as any other team at the top of the standings.
Most important, they had a quarterback in Sam Darnold who, unlike his predecessor, had developed a knack for shaking off mistakes and making big-boy throws in big-boy moments. For 17 weeks, Darnold was one of the best passers in football. I saw it. I saw him put a 97-yard dagger into San Francisco. I saw him hit the mute button on the Seahawks home crowd with a game-winning rainbow to Jefferson, in the freezing rain. I saw him sweep the Packers and get his own Rudy moment in the locker room afterward. This was the quarterback that Sam Darnold, an impending free agent, was always meant to be.
And then, in record time, he went to being the quarterback he’s always been.
The Vikings lost their Week 18 showdown with the Lions, and home-field advantage in the conference, mostly because Darnold played like shit. They lost last night for the same reason. Both the Lions and Rams gameplanned for Darnold by saying, OK, he has decent numbers against the blitz, but what if we like blitzed him blitzed him? Well, what happens when you do that to Sam Darnold is that he shrinks two feet in height, gets more skittish than a defendant awaiting a verdict, and ceases to be a functional NFL quarterback.
Darnold was ghastly last night, soiling the desert air with inaccurate passes and holding onto the ball longer than Elvis held in his final bowel movement. He was sacked nine times, many of those sacks as much his fault as his crumbling O-line’s. He turned the ball over twice, including a fumble that DROY lock Jared Verse housed for a touchdown. Darnold was spooked, overwhelmed, inaccurate, and indecisive. He sucked. It was one of the most shocking collapses you’ll ever witness from an individual football player who doesn’t play kicker.
Again, this’ll all be explained away in the coming hours and days with It’s Sam Darnold, what did you expect? followed up quickly with It’s the Vikings, what did you expect? Neither of these explanations are illuminating. They’re also both REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING—even more annoying than watching a deserving Rams team put us in the toilet. At least Eagles fans diversify their trolling by occasionally assaulting my team’s most elderly fan. Those people try. So few others do. As a result, I’ll have to dodge the usual Nerf arrows launched my way, and I won’t have any viable defense against them, because 27-9 is 27-9.
The good news, if there’s any to be gleaned on Minnesota’s side of the equation, is that Darnold’s stretch-run performance obviates the need to bring him back for next season. At the turn of the new year, Darnold had played so well that he threatened to upend the Vikings’ long-gestating plan to turn the reins over to rookie J.J. McCarthy in 2025 and spend their cap space lavishly on free agents to surround him. You couldn’t let that Sam Darnold walk. He was playing so much like he was the guy that perhaps he was the guy.
He wasn’t. He was just Sam Darnold.
And I’m OK with that. It’s fitting that the same player who taught me how to take my fandom one game at a time would be the same one to subject that philosophy to the ultimate stress test. The first person to offer me a “I Survived Sam Darnold” T-shirt will find themselves $18 richer. But I have survived, and I suppose I always quietly knew how this would end. This was always a fling, and to dream about it being anything more than that would have been foolish. I had my fun with Sam Darnold, but I’m not really looking for anything more than that right now. I’m just looking for some cookies and a warm blanket. Thanks for the memories, Sam. Now fuck off.
