The news from Green Bay is this: Sam Darnold hasn't turned into San Darnold just yet, and the possibility that he actually isn't Sam Darnold anymore remains more than zero.
The phrase "Sam Darnold" here is meant as the pejorative everyone who pays attention to these things has always meant it to be, but the Darnold in this dimension continues to defy the common usage. He isn't the central reason the Minnesota Vikings have won their first four games, which puts them in approximately the 95th percentile of all NFL teams in the last decade, but he has been more than just "not an impediment." I mean, 4-0 is its own answer to any question you have.
On the other hand, the Vikings nearly blew a 28-0 lead and escaped with a 31-29 win in Green Bay, and nobody came away from the game thinking, "I think I'd rather have Darnold than Jordan Love as my quarterback, too."
This is the year that a new market inefficiency has been found in the NFL. In the absence of having a good quarterback on a rookie contract, more and more teams are finding the beauty in having an uber-veteran making less than that, who performs efficiently and doesn't flummox easily. This is not a wise long-term strategy, but as Kyle Shanahan has taught us with Jimmy Garoppolo and Brock Purdy, you don't need great quarterbacking if you're really good everywhere else. It's how people have relocated their appreciations for Geno Smith, Baker Mayfield, Andy Dalton, Joe Flacco (JOE FLACCO!), and most notably Darnold.
And for the first half, Darnold looked like the Pavlovian response to the question, "But what if the guy you drafted got hurt in his first game?" Despite the crime of not being J.J. McCarthy, he has looked fully synergistic with the Vikings and they with him. The result has been handy wins over the Giants and Texans, a grinder over the 49ers, and now a cold-sweat special against the Pack. Of those four games, this was the most problematic for the Darnold-for-MVP crowd. He was as good as at any point this season in the first half (11 of 15, 136 yards, three touchdown passes, and 192 yards of total offense). In the second, though, the offensive drives ended thus: interception/punt/punt/fumble/field goal/punt/downs and end of game.
In other words, the Vikings were the two different teams everyone suspected they would be when the season started, but they built enough early-game credit to act like Alabama at the end of their win over Georgia. And, however you choose to parse their day, the worse you can say is that they failed to fail.
How Darnold fits into this is also an eye-of-the-beholder matter. The gravitational pull of every-game-is-about-the-quarterback reasoning helps keep football fans ignorant to what they are actually watching, and in this case it gives short shrift to running back Aaron Jones and cheat code Justin Jefferson—not to mention a defense that has dominated the first seven of the eight halves it has played. But, until today, Darnold has been the defining presence in the retread renaissance. Even after a draggy second half, he still has the Vikings two games better than most folks figured they would be, and nobody in the state has bemoaned McCarthy's absence.
Yet.
Darnold seems like your classic week-to-week guy, but so did Smith, and he's been the starter in Seattle for three years now, and so did Mayfield, and he got paid in Tampa after a year of atonement for sins committed in Cleveland—a common malady for quarterbacks before and since. There has never been a better time to be a wily veteran (JOE FLACCO!) and Darnold has been quite wily indeed. Viking fans just have to be comfortable with the notion that they can never feel truly safe with him. They're probably better off finding solace with the less-fun fact that the Vikings actually look like they've finally been properly built everywhere else.
After four games, anyway. Viking fans know how to not fully commit to anything before Halloween.
Editor's note (Sept. 29, 8:46 p.m. ET): This blog's editor was not as good as Sam Darnold today and initially put the wrong byline on the blog. She apologizes to everyone, especially Mr. Ratto.
