A Year After the Vikings Let Him Walk, Sam Darnold Heads to the Super Bowl

In the annals of Minnesota Vikings history, this one can be filed under "Of course that happened."

The quarterback the Vikings let walk out the door in free agency last March signed with the Seahawks, went 14-3 for a second straight season, and is now headed to a stage his old team hasn't reached in nearly 50 years. Sam Darnold played the game of his life on Sunday, throwing for 346 yards and 3 touchdowns in an epic 31-27 win over the Rams in the NFC title game. One year after Minnesota didn't fully commit to keeping him, he's going to the Super Bowl.

Objectively speaking, it's a pretty tough look for the Vikings and their decision-makers. Their virtually unprecedented decision — letting a QB leave after a 14-win season — has aged as poorly as it possibly could've. Even with a bit of a slump in the second half of the regular season, Darnold proved to be more or less exactly the same player he was in Minnesota. Except this time, backed by an excellent team, he was ready for the moment when the playoffs arrived. It's even more fitting that he slayed his demons against the same Rams squad that sacked him nine times and turned him over twice in a blowout in last year's wild card round.

Meanwhile, the Vikings don't know who their quarterback is going to be in Week 1 of the 2026 season. There's a good chance it'll be J.J. McCarthy, but the former No. 10 overall pick struggled so mightily with injuries and turnovers in his debut season that it's not a guarantee he keeps the job for a second season. The current reality is that the Vikings had a franchise QB in their building — a guy capable of getting a team to a Super Bowl — and they let him go to test what was behind door No. 2. And while McCarthy's story hasn't yet been fully written, the first chapter was extremely underwhelming.

It is important to keep in mind that any present analysis of the situation is done with the unbeatable benefit of hindsight. Unless you wanted them to re-sign Darnold at the time, there should perhaps be a limit to how much you're allowed to bash the Vikings' front office. After that ugly playoff defeat in Arizona last January, Darnold had struggled immensely in the two biggest games of his career. The Vikings clearly needed to improve in the trenches, and re-signing Darnold at the price it would require would've inhibited their ability to do so. They had an untested, top-ten drafted QB on a rookie deal waiting in the wings. While unprecedented and definitely not universally agreed upon, their decision to cap what they were willing to offer Darnold wasn't considered crazy in the moment.

It has certainly blown up in their faces, which was always within the range of possible outcomes. The lesson is probably that finding a 2024 Darnold-level quarterback isn't easy, so when you do find one, you hold onto them and worry about upgrading the other parts of the roster later. Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and Kevin O'Connell may have been overconfident in the latter's ability to get sufficient quarterback play out of anybody, including McCarthy. Only time will tell.

Kevin O'Connell | Brad Rempel-Imagn Images

What makes this all sting even more is that the free agents the Vikings signed with the money they saved at QB were highly disappointing. Jonathan Allen and Javon Hargrave were mediocre and outplayed by Jalen Redmond, a minimum-salaried pickup from the UFL. Will Fries was entirely unspectacular. Ryan Kelly couldn't stay on the field. Isaiah Rodgers had one unbelievable game and was merely fine outside of that.

This situation also shines a light on Adofo-Mensah's struggles in the draft, which is a widely-discussed topic in Vikings land. Had he and his staff hit on more contributors in the 2022-24 drafts, the Vikings may have felt comfortable paying Darnold because they wouldn't have needed to allocate their free agency money elsewhere.

Darnold certainly deserves his share of the blame for the Vikings' losses to the Lions and Rams that ended a promising 2024 season. But he also didn't play those games by himself. The Seahawks were able to put a better, more complete team around him this year than the Vikings did last year. Both teams had an elite wide receiver and an outstanding defense, but this Seattle team can run the ball and has an offensive line that's kept Darnold mostly upright. And on a personal level, who knows? Maybe he needed to go through last year to get to this point. The Rams game a year ago was his first career playoff start. Maybe that experience helped him get over the hump this time.

1 minute and 22 seconds of Sam Darnold’s best throws of the NFC Championship Game. #GoHawks pic.twitter.com/1yW9pcWs3m
— connor (Deathrow KP) (@keithpricetrut1) January 26, 2026

In two weeks, Super Bowl LX will be played in the Bay Area. Quarterbacking one team will be Darnold, the Vikings' QB last season. Quarterbacking the other team will be the Patriots' Drake Maye, who the Vikings reportedly tried to trade up for in the 2024 draft before taking McCarthy. Either Darnold and Klint Kubiak will get Super Bowl rings, or New England's Garrett Bradbury and Stefon Diggs (and Josh Dobbs and Khyiris Tonga) will. Meanwhile, the Vikings are in quarterback limbo and haven't won a playoff game since the 2019 season.

All of this only serves to add pressure to what was already a critical offseason for Adofo-Mensah, O'Connell, and everyone else in the Vikings organization. They got the QB decision wrong last year, and now they might have to watch Darnold win Super Bowl MVP. They can't get it wrong again. Their jobs likely depend on it.

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