Sam Darnold on final games in Minnesota: “We laid an egg on offense”

Quarterback Sam Darnold’s lone season as Minnesota’s starter was magical, until it wasn’t.

At 14-2 and with one game in Detroit with the No. 1 seed on the line, Darnold’s chariot became pumpkinized. Then, in the wild-card round, the orange menace spread to the rest of the team.

“For lack of a better term, we laid an egg as an offense,” Darnold recently told Mike Silver of TheAthletic.com. “And I think, for me personally, that sucks. I felt like we were a really good team, but at the end of the day — and this is gonna sound a little pessimistic — but when you get to the end of it and you don’t win the whole thing, you failed.”

He’s right. There’s only one trophy. And the better a team performs in the regular season, the more prominent the failure seems when it happens.

“I feel like I could have played way better, to be completely honest with you,” Darnold said. “I feel I didn’t play up to my standard. I truly feel that way. I feel like if I would have just played better, I would’ve been able to give the team a chance.”

Darnold’s play was more conspicuous in Week 18, when the Vikings repeatedly had chances and Darnold repeatedly misfired. By the time the playoffs started, the Vikings were simply overmatched and overpowered.

So what happened in those two losses that turned a 14-2 start into an 0-2 finish?

“I feel like L.A. did very similar things on third down to what Detroit did to us,” Darnold said. “They played man and tried to play some ‘robber’ stuff, and that just gave us some troubles. It gave me some troubles, personally.”

As Darnold tries to learn from that experience, it sounds as if he’ll be more committed to running with the ball in 2025 if/when his options are stymied in the passing game.

“[Kevin O’Connell] and those guys in Minnesota did such a good job — and we do a great job here as well — of giving me answers if they take options away,” Darnold told Silver. “Like, just go through your progressions and work your feet and if it’s not there take off and run — because there’s no one accounting for the quarterback, unless they play a spy or whatever.”

Whatever happens in 2025, the gains Darnold made in the first 16 games of the 2024 season were undermined by the regressions of the final two. And even if he gets off to a great start again this year, the real question will be whether he shows up when the lights are the brightest and the stakes are the highest.