Put aside the bitterness and appreciate Sam Darnold's Super Bowl victory
With a juggernaut team behind him, Sam Darnold led the Seahawks to the Super Bowl
By Matthew Coller
It’s been a pretty rough last eight months or so for Minnesota Vikings fans.
After watching their franchise let Sam Darnold leave the building in favor of a young quarterback who was supposed to represent the long-awaited Franchise Guy, the forever indefatigable purple faithful watched helplessly as the worst possible scenario played out in front of their eyes: Darnold quarterbacked the Seattle Seahawks to Super Bowl victory on Sunday evening.
Last offseason, fans jumped on board with the team’s concept of rolling with JJ McCarthy with over keeping Darnold because they believed that Darnold had shown his limitations in the team’s rough playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams.
But nothing went to plan. McCarthy got hurt four times in 10 starts and finished 42nd of 45 QBs in passer rating and head coach Kevin O’Connell spent the final five weeks “dumbing down” the offense in order to eek out an above .500 season.
Meanwhile, Darnold’s team emerged as the best top-to-bottom group in the NFL and he continued to slay “ghosts” and unfair narratives along the way.
After Darnold left the “he’s still Sam Darnold” people in the dust when he threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns against the Rams to reach the Super Bowl, there was only one more game for the Vikings to avoid being tagged with the historic gaffe of walking way from the Super Bowl.
The ironic thing about Sunday’s win by Darnold’s Seahawks over the New England Patriots was that he didn’t have to do too much. There was no Superman act in his 19-for-38, 202-yard and one-touchdown performance. He moved the chains a few times, tossed a wide open dagger TD and didn’t make any mistakes. Zero turnovers and just one sack. It was RB Kenneth Walker, not Darnold, who took home MVP.
But isn’t that the point of why blaming Darnold for everything that happened at the end of the 2024 season in Vikings losses to the Detroit Lions and Los Angeles Rams was so erroneous? Teams win and lose in the playoffs, not just quarterbacks. Maybe Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes twisted everybody’s brains into thinking otherwise over the last couple decades — though even they had epic failures in huge games when they didn’t have the right support, as Darnold didn’t vs. Detroit and LA.
When he did have the proper supporting cast — a great ground game and strong playcaller and the best defense in the NFL — he proved more than worthy of the moment.
Maybe the argument from the same fans who weren’t sad to see Darnold go last year will be that the 2025 Vikings team couldn’t have won the Super Bowl anyway. Maybe. Maybe not. We’ll never know. They were pretty darn good defensively versus Dallas and Detroit at the end of the year when they got healthy.
We do know that they’ll never live this down. Every time Darnold’s name comes up (he’s only 28, so this is going to happen for a long time), the words, “Minnesota let him go and then he won the Super Bowl” will follow in some form.
Add that to the Vikings’ struggles to find a franchise quarterback capable of winning the Super Bowl and it makes it all the more maddening for long-time followers. The draft picks. The random pop-up years from Randall Cunningham, Jeff George, Brett Favre and Case Keenum. The guys who had their moments like Tommy Kramer and Daunte Culpepper and Teddy Bridgewater. They thought McCarthy would be the one to end the streak. Instead the guy who proved this January and February that he was capable of putting the curses of the past away was allowed to walk for a third-round compensation draft pick.
Only hours before Darnold won the first championship ring by anyone in the 2018 NFL Draft class that includes Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson and Baker Mayfield, NFL insiders were giving reports about a potential Derek Carr comeback. At radio row, Kirk Cousins gave a few interviewers a wry smile when asked about a return to Minnesota. Bleak. At least the silver lining is that the random QB model has worked before for the Vikings.
Anyway, there might be an urge to spend Monday morning and the coming weeks being annoyed at all of the praise for Darnold or frustrated with the circumstances or bewildered at how the team could allow such a QB to get away, but I’d like to suggest something different: Appreciating Darnold as a worthy champion and one of the best Super Bowl stories of all time.
In the last 11 months since the Vikings elected to let him hit free agency rather than franchise tag him, Darnold has had approximately 100,000 opportunities to say, “I told you so.” His best one came on the stage and in the post-game press conference room following Seattle’s win. He never said it. Not even close. “We did it” is what he said instead.
When the Seahawks beat the Vikings’ brains in earlier this year, he said nothing bad about his former franchise either. When the Vikings missed the playoffs and Seattle won the No. 1 seed, he said nothing bad about his former franchise. When the Vikings fired their GM and the Seahawks beat the Rams (of all freaking teams), he said nothing bad about his former franchise.
In fact, when he was in Minnesota, he never said anything bad about his former franchises, the New York Jets and Carolina Panthers. Lemme tell ya: A lot of reporters have tried to get him to do it.
I saw a tweet from the great Brett Kollman last week about how Darnold must carry some hate in his heart for his ex teams that drove him to this level of success. Any of us who grew up with Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant would subscribe to the theory that you can’t be a competitor with some shades of their type of fire but I don’t buy it with Sam. He would have to be a Denzel Washington-level actor to hide away his distain for those who doubted him this well.
A better theory is that it’s not his personality to hold grudges and “show the haters.”
After going to every press conference that Darnold had from OTAs to minicamp to training camp to his five-touchdown performance over Kirk Cousins’ Falcons to the Gag in Glendale, I’ve come to the opinion that Darnold is simply a “would play for free” guy. That’s why his teammates in Seattle bought into him so quickly.
And even if he won’t ever really say it, can you imagine what being in the Super Bowl means to this guy?
Left for dead by a clueless Jets franchise that fired its coach after Year 1 of his career and hired Adam Gase. Given up on by the Panthers after they hired a college coach who was there and gone faster than you can say “you Rhule!”
Sitting behind Brock Purdy, the final pick in the NFL draft, Darnold had every reason to sulk and wonder why Purdy was blessed with incredible weapons and the top offensive mastermind in the NFL and he had been stuck with an offensive coordinator who never worked again in the league after his rookie year.
Instead, Darnold learned from Purdy. He has constantly cited Purdy’s approach to the position that changed everything for him. Play point guard, he said. Huh.
And then he finally proves that he’s capable of being that guy that the Jets believed in as the No. 3 overall pick in 2018 but two bad games take it all apart.
Yet here we are.
It’s something more than just a guy who was once a bust finally having things work out. It’s a testament to the way he dealt with all of this. In a world that wants to take shots at everybody else and dunk on others constantly, Darnold just kept plugging.
Throughout Super Bowl history there have been a lot of great redemption arcs at the quarterback position. Doug Williams coming back from the USFL to become the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. Kurt Warner taking over for Trent Green and taking the Rams to a title. Nick Foles coming in as a backup. Matthew Stafford finally getting his due in Los Angeles. Darnold’s story goes on that list of all-timers now.
Darnold’s success should make us check our own perceptions and biases.
Was it really fair to hold the whole “seeing ghosts” thing over his head when he said when he was just a kid in the NFL playing against Bill Belichick’s vaunted defense and the broadcast never should have aired it to begin with?
Should a quarterback alone really take the fall for a playoff loss when Patrick Mahomes played exactly the same game in the Super Bowl last year?
And maybe people can change. They can grow. Learn from their experiences. Just because you saw ghosts then, doesn’t mean you have to see them now. Maybe someday JJ McCarthy will be looking back at the times he was mocked for calling himself “Nine” as he makes it big.
We watch sports for stories like Sam Darnold. We want to believe there are still athletes in this world who play for the love of the game and their teammates and he’s proof that they still exist. So don’t forget to leave room amidst your frustration for happiness for a quarterback who gave everything he had to the Vikings and happened to reach the pinnace of the sport somewhere else.
Woke up this morning thinking of Brad Johnson winning the Super Bowl with the Bucs. Didn’t have to do much then, either. Anyway, good for Sam! He seems like a great guy, I enjoyed rooting for him last year. He deserves it.
I'll never understand why anyone would be upset with Sam. I would have been equally happy for either quarterback to win but this may be Sam's only opportunity so I am thrilled for him! Boring game but exciting outcome.