Takeaways from end-of-year press conferences

The Vikings' brass talked quarterbacks and their own contracts

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By Matthew Coller

EAGAN — At the end-of-year press conference following the 2022 season, Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell were asked about the future of their quarterback position. At the end-of-year press conference following the 2023 season, the brass were hit with even more questions about the future QB situation because Kirk Cousins was set to become a free agent. You’ll never guess what the biggest topic of conversation was at the KAM-KOC 2024 end-of-year press conference was: The future of the quarterback situation.

The common theme to all three years was that Adofo-Mensah and O’Connell were not going to commit to anything just days following painful ends to the seasons. In 2022 they lost to the Giants after winning 13 games and this year they came apart against the Los Angeles Rams in a blowout loss on the road following a 14-win regular season campaign.

They talked around the choice that the team is facing between re-signing or franchise tagging Sam Darnold or turning the franchise over to JJ McCarthy, who they picked 10th overall in the draft last year.

One notable news item revealed was that McCarthy has begun his on-field workouts and throwing as part of his recovery from meniscus surgery that he underwent back in August.

McCarthy’s track to recovery could have a significant impact on the direction of the QB position.

“From a medical standpoint he’s returned to on-field training, he's returned to being able to be right where we hoped he would be at this point,” O’Connell said.

What about McCarthy’s development during the season? He was not able to participate in any type of practice due to being on IR but the former Michigan quarterback did spend the year observing Darnold, working in the meeting rooms and learning from the coaches.

“I think he maximized what this year was for him,” O’Connell said. “I think he's got a level of comfort in our offensive system and getting to really have a front row seat for every aspect of what Sam [Darnold] went through from being in the first year in our system and watching it kind of morph and grow and adapt as the season went on.”

In terms of whether he would actually be ready to begin starting in 2025, O’Connell said: “Him being able to absorb a lot of [the offense] and now have a really positive offseason from start to finish here will be able to give us the answer to that question.”

That’s a difficult sentence to interpret because the Vikings are working on a timeline with Darnold. They do not have all offseason with OTAs, minicamp and training camp to figure out if McCarthy is ready for the job. Instead they have to decide whether to franchise tag Darnold by March 5th.

That means they have a month-and-a-half to work through all the permutations of the situation. Go with McCarthy and figure out the backup situation? Tag Darnold? Tag and trade Darnold? Sign Darnold to a short-term extension like Baker Mayfield’s contract with the Bucs last year?

Back in training camp when McCarthy got injured, O’Connell declared him a “franchise quarterback,” but the Vikings’ head coach has also been insistent that he would always work on the timeline that was best for his soon-to-be 22-year-old quarterback.

“He had already done some things to confirm a lot of the special aspects of what J.J. McCarthy had been as a player at a very successful level, at the collegiate level, but then also in a very short amount of time what we had deemed to be -- he was absolutely on the right track,” O’Connell said. “And at the same time, throughout that whole time, I do remember saying that Sam [Darnold] was having a great training camp and doing a lot of the things that we hoped he would do on his kind of individualized approach to being at his best and playing the best football of his career.”

At the center of the QB debate is the way in which the Vikings’ season ended. Darnold struggled in the final two games of the year with huge playoff implications in Detroit and then the season on the line in Los Angeles.

How did O’Connell come away from the last two games versus the bigger picture of 2024 when it came to Darnold?

“I think so many little things in a game lead up to the final score and the outcome and the massive amounts of narratives that can I'm out of games like that, and I understand it, I get it, I totally do, because those are the types of games you want to play in,” O’Connell said. “I have learned over the years that it could be one play, one third down in the red zone, one third down in the field where there's a chance to make a play, or I could have given a better play call, or we could have had a better protection plan, or maybe it's a defensive assignment or execution of a call….I think Sam did a lot of fantastic things. I think everybody around this league acknowledges the type of season Sam had.”

That might seem like O’Connell urging fans to avoid overreacting to the final outcome but read into any of these comments at your own peril. O’Connell has always made sure to choose his words wisely when it comes to quarterbacks and that wouldn’t change in this instance, particularly when Darnold was so good for the vast majority of the regular season.

Adofo-Mensah noted the big games that Darnold won at Seattle and Lambeau Field and pointed out that “it’s not a bad thing to assemble a lot of talent in that room.” The GM laid out some of the factors that the Vikings’ brass will consider as they go into decision making mode.

“What's the team around them going to look like? What does this piece fit into our whole championship equation?” Adofo-Mensah said. “We'll do those exercises like we did last offseason and came up with the plan that we came up with. We'll have those conversations with Kevin [O’Connell], my staff, everybody in this building to come along board because at the end of the day, you know, you're making decisions under uncertainty, but what happens is once you find a course of action, it's about how you implement your plan.”

The implementation of the plan will include weighing how much they can spend in 2025 free agency if they franchise tag Darnold and that eats up around half of their available cap space.

“There's so many ways to do it, whether you approach it coaching for agency, poach, trade, draft, all those different things,” Adofo-Mensah said. “We've had players that we've had here and we developed into bigger roles. It's always about identifying what you have in your building and then knowing where you need to go as a championship team in terms of a talent roster standpoint and going from there.”

One interesting breadcrumb that Adofo-Mensah dropped was a conversation that he had with O’Connell before the season in which he seemed to suggest that he asked the head coach what he would need in order for them to keep Darnold into the future.

“I always ask Kevin before the season starts…. what information would you need to kind of change your mind and say it beforehand so that you're not kind of whipped around with what potentially could happen?” Adofo-Mensah explained. “We thought there was a chance Sam Darnold could play at a high level. Just seeing what he had done at previous stops and what kind of Kevin's infrastructure and our infrastructure here has done for other quarterbacks that have played here, we thought there was a chance for a high level.”

Did Darnold reach the bar to change their minds? Or did that change in Glendale?

The moving parts to the decision have a lot of information involved that they only know internally. Do they feel that McCarthy will be ready? Do they think he needs more time? Does Darnold want to return to a place where he will be looking over his shoulder? Do they see a path to solidifying the roster while working within cap constraints?

We will see those things play out in the coming months.

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