Darnold's confidence is a total team effort

Can the Vikings keep getting quality play from Sam Darnold? If they keep supporting him then they can

© Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images

---

By Matthew Coller

EAGAN — By now you have probably seen it pointed out that Sam Darnold’s blazing hot start to the 2024 season is not the only time in his career where he’s had a good stretch.

Well, it’s true. In his first three games as a Carolina Panther, he went 3-0 with a 99.0 QB rating. He won just one more game the rest of that 2021 season and produced six touchdowns, 12 interceptions and a 62.3 rating. He also had a November run with the Jets in 2019 where he had a 117.2 rating and averaged 34 points per game.

Naturally there would be skepticism about whether Darnold’s 2-0 start for the Vikings is something that he can keep rolling or if the wheels will similarly come flying off.

However, the sample size of Darnold playing at a high level goes back farther than just two games. In nine starts since 2022, the former top pick of the Jets has 12 touchdowns to five interceptions at 8.4 yards per pass attempt and a 97.5 QB rating. Things started to turn around following Matt Rhule’s exit from Carolina and picked up where he left off at the end of ‘22 thus far.

After the benching of Bryce Young, the talk around the NFL is quarterback development. For so long quarterbacks either turned into Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes or ended up as college football TV analysts a few years after being drafted and there was no in between. But suddenly Geno Smith is playing well for the third straight year and Baker Mayfield is repeating last season’s breakout results.

It feels like we haven’t seen this type of thing happening since guys like Jake Plummer, Jeff Garcia, Rich Gannon, Kerry Collins and Trent Green ended up as top QBs out of nowhere in the early 2000s.

But the path to those players emerging from the shadows to take teams deep in the playoffs and get Pro Bowl nods during that era was not any different than it is now. Rich Gannon developed and then found the right offense under Jon Gruden. Jake Plummer developed and found the right offense under Mike Shanahan. Jeff Garcia dropped onto a team that had Terrell Owens. Trent Green played behind possibly the sickest offensive line of the decade.

It’s not that everybody who plays quarterback can simply get themselves a good coach, a few big dudes up front and a wide receiver and profit but there seem to be a bevy of quarterbacks who could get pushed either way depending on the environment. Darnold’s hot streaks before may have had hints in there that he was capable of leading a winning team but the surroundings weren’t stable enough for that to happen.

“We feel in our offense with the players around Sam [Darnold] can lead to him having a lot of success,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said on Wednesday. “The vision for him started before he got here and really has been something we have worked towards every single day.”

The word that comes to mind to describe Darnold’s play over the first two games is confidence. Against the Giants he whipped a pass in Justin Jefferson’s direction for a 44-yard gain and then fired a ball into tight coverage the end zone on fourth down for a touchdown. Against the 49ers he aired out a 97-yard TD pass that traveled 50-plus yards in the air and then converted key third downs to put the game on ice.

“There was a confidence about the way he dropped back and stuck his back foot in the ground,” offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said. “A lot of people have recognized the throw to Speedy Jalen Nailor against the two-deep [coverage] and the anticipation… you just saw some ownership of the plan the confidence to just hit the back foot take a hitch and rip that that's that's what I was most impressed with.”

I asked head coach Kevin O’Connell if he dialed up passes for Darnold during situations where they could have played much more conservatively with the idea of showing belief in him and/or boosting his confidence.

“I mean maybe it's subconsciously, maybe it is a little bit,” he said. “I'm not really finding myself trying to really feel the need to build confidence. I think I'm going into these games confident in Sam to execute the plays that are called.”

If nothing else, the belief O’Connell is showing in Darnold is coming through in terms of how often he’s asked the journeyman QB to throw the ball. Analytics expert Kevin Cole noted that the run-pass ratio for the Vikings is well above expectation (fifth highest) based on down, distance and score.

“It's awesome to be able to have a coach and staff that believes in you but he doesn't just believe in me, he believes in the entire team and the entire offense to be able to go out there and execute,” Darnold said. “And I think that's kind of another reason I feel like we've been able to respond to some adversity in these games is because that trust never waivers throughout games.”

It’s easier for O’Connell to keep trusting Darnold when he hasn’t let mistakes linger. He bounced back from an opening-drive fumble in Week 1 and then a red zone INT and fumble in Week 2 and didn’t lose pace. O’Connell thinks that Darnold’s bumps along the road have shaped his ability to overcome when things go sideways.

“Adversity is going to hit just like it did early on against the Giants and Sam found a way to respond,” O’Connell said. “I think the response to adversity is wired in Sam because of his quarterback journey. It's our jobs and I just want to make sure of two things: everybody understands just how much Sam is responsible for Sam being who he is as a Minnesota Viking.”

“I've had experiences where bad things have happened and I think the more you play football, the more you understand, you can't control everything out there and things are going to happen in the game,” Darnold said.

Certainly making it through some very difficult times says a lot about Darnold’s resilience. But it’s also easier for Darnold to keep his head up with the things that have happened around him so far. There are 19 QBs who have been pressured more often and when he’s had clean pockets Darnold has the second highest QB rating in the NFL only behind Josh Allen.

Darnold is 9-for-13 on play-action throws with the sixth most yards in the league. He’s averaging 6.8 yards per pass on screens. He’s thrown the fourth lowest percentage of passes into tight coverage, per NFL NextGen. The Vikings are ninth in yards per carry.

Through two weeks, all the things that needed to happen to build up Darnold have happened. The results have been exceptional as he posted his eighth and ninth highest career QB ratings for a single game and has the fourth highest PFF grade.

The sustainability of The Darnold Experiment will be tested by the nasty Houston Texans defense, which ranks second to the Vikings in sacks through two weeks. But even if Darnold runs into bumps in the road in the coming weeks with difficult opponents, his supporting cast is only going to get better on offense.

“Make no mistake about it, this is Sam Darnold, and this is who I believe he is,” O’Connell said. “Hopefully at some point in the not-too-distant future, we'll start getting [Jordan] Addison back and then hopefully Hock [T.J. Hockenson] after that. Then how does this thing look at that point for Sam is just an ongoing, evolving thing…. everybody is doing the work around him to help make it happen.”