Vikings’ Sam Darnold reacts to nightmare outing in loss to Rams

Quarterback Sam Darnold was a big reason the Minnesota Vikings entered Week 18 at 14-2, but he then endured a pair of nightmare performances across what could go down as the final two games of his Minnesota tenure. 

Following the Vikings’ disheartening 27-9 wild-card playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams on Monday night, Darnold spoke openly about outings he’d probably prefer to forget sooner rather than later.

“You know, I clearly just didn’t play good enough the last couple weeks,” Darnold acknowledged, as shared by Myles Simmons of Pro Football Talk. “…Left too many throws out there that I would usually make. Gotta take better care of the football — today, especially.”

Darnold entered January as one of the top candidates for the Associated Press Comeback Player of the Year Award but then largely resembled the signal-caller who famously flopped during stints with the New York Jets and Carolina Panthers when the Vikings needed him most. In the Week 18 31-9 loss at the Detroit Lions that determined the champions of the NFC North and the No. 1 seed for the playoffs, he completed 18-of-41 passes for 166 yards with no touchdowns. 

The 27-year-old then took a beating on Monday night. According to Kevin Seifert of ESPN, the 82 yards Darnold lost on nine sacks set a postseason record. Against the Rams, he completed 25-of-40 passes for 245 yards with a touchdown, an interception and a second-quarter fumble that was returned for a score. 

“I felt like there were a lot of sacks today that I was responsible for,” Darnold admitted, “where I was just holding onto the football and taking sacks where I could’ve either dirted it at someone’s feet or just simply thrown it over someone’s head.”

Much was made throughout the fall about how the Vikings could handle the fact that Darnold remained on track to reach free agency as rookie and first-round draft pick J.J. McCarthy continued to recover from a full meniscus repair he needed in August. Following Monday’s debacle, analysts such as ESPN’s Dan Graziano predicted that the Vikings will let Darnold hit the open market when the new league year begins in March.

“Obviously, at the end of the day, all that matters is when you have a good season, what do you do in the playoffs? And we didn’t get it done and that’s all that matters,” Darnold added during his postgame comments. “I’ll have a lot of time after this to be able to think about what the season entailed, but to be honest, I’m just thinking about today and what I could’ve done better.”

Logic suggests multiple teams will want to take a flier on Darnold for at least the 2025 campaign after he ended this past regular season with the league’s fifth-most passing yards (4,319) and fifth-most touchdowns through the air (35), per ESPN stats. With that said, he likely cost himself quite a bit of money when he turned the clock back in a negative way over his last eight quarters of play.