With all due respect to the stupid (and desperate) NFL team that will eventually give Sam Darnold a Brink’s Truck of money this offseason — I urge you to reconsider.
Monday night’s Minnesota Vikings wild-card loss to the Los Angeles Rams was a microcosm of Darnold’s inherent flaws as a difference-making quarterback.
Proceed with caution.
Yes, Darnold can succeed when everything is going well. Yes, he can take advantage of quality coaching that sets up ideal matchups all over the field. (It’s also nice that he throws to Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison.)
But when push comes to shove, when the opposing defense asks Darnold to make more extended reads than he’s comfortable, when it’s clear he feels relentless defensive pressure — and it’s spooked him beyond all regard — he remains the same old pumpkin of a quarterback we all know and love.
Darnold’s inept performance on Monday night, in fact, was validation for those who believe sacks are a quarterback statistic. The Vikings’ offensive line, especially without stalwart left tackle Christian Darrisaw, struggled against the Rams’ onslaught. Under such circumstances, any other quarterback in Darnold’s shoes would’ve probably found it hard to sustain any sort of positive rhythm.
But because he can’t help himself from holding onto the ball way too long when his first and second reads aren’t open, Darnold still exacerbated Minnesota’s blocking issues in a game where he was also sacked nine times.
Vikings allowed 24 pressures tonight.
Rams allowed 6.
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) January 14, 2025
Oh man, only 11 of those 24 pressures happened within 2.5 seconds of the snap.
My God, Sam.
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) January 14, 2025
Dearest readers, that is untenable. This is the NFL. Offensive linemen should not be expected to sustain quality blocks for over three seconds against monstrous, lightning-quick athletes on the other side of the ball. There’s a reason quarterbacks who get the ball out of their hands on time are often much more valuable than the big-game hunters who never let a play die. The latter, like Darnold to a degree, create much more negative sequences when they take unnecessary sacks.
None of this is to say that all sacks are on quarterbacks. That would be silly. Obviously, an offensive line’s pass-blocking performance greatly affects a quarterback’s individual success. But when people say “sacks are a quarterback stat,” they mean that a quarterback can always make blocking issues look even worse when they hold onto the ball way too long.
Think of it this way. If a quarterback hasn’t thrown the ball after three seconds on any given NFL play — more than any reasonable offensive line should be expected to hold up — an ensuing sack is most often on the signal-caller. It’s a good rule of thumb that proves true in most cases.
And that encapsulated Darnold’s likely last game in a Vikings uniform to a tee. He saw ghosts and made Minnesota’s struggling offensive line look a lot worse than it already was.
