The Vikings\u2019 surprise package was one of the NFL best quarterbacks all season long until Sunday night\u2019s stinker in Detroit. Was it an anomaly or regression to the norm?<\/p>\n
If you were waiting this season for Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold to fail \u2013 not in an evil schadenfreude<\/em> sense, but more in an \u201cOh, there\u2019s the Sam Darnold of old\u201d sense \u2013 then Darnold\u2019s Sunday night performance<\/a> against Detroit in a 31-9 Lions win gave you a lot of ballast for that position.<\/p>\n Darnold had become one of the NFL\u2019s best stories<\/a> this season. The third overall pick by the New York Jets in the 2018 draft had three middling seasons with his original team, two more with the Carolina Panthers in 2021 and 2022, and a backup role with the San Francisco 49ers in 2023. He signed a one-year, $10m deal with the Vikings this past offseason to be first-round rookie JJ McCarthy\u2019s backup, but when McCarthy suffered a turn meniscus in the preseason, it was all on Darnold and he responded brilliantly. He proved to be the perfect foil for head coach and offensive shot-caller Kevin O\u2019Connell\u2019s game, which is one of the NFL\u2019s best and most diverse.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Vikings\u2019 surprise package was one of the NFL best quarterbacks all season long until Sunday night\u2019s stinker in Detroit. Was it an anomaly or regression to the norm? If you were waiting this season for Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold to fail \u2013 not in an evil schadenfreude sense, but more in an \u201cOh, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}