09-21-2024, 04:42 PM -
Sam Darnold is finally the NFL quarterback other teams never let him become
The Vikings have provided a platform unlike any Sam Darnold had before, and the former Jets draft pick is thriving.
In the fourth week of the 2016 season, Clay Helton had turned his football team over to an 18-year-old redshirt freshman. On the Southern California sideline, amid the bedlam of Utah’s Rice-Eccles Stadium, the coach wanted to confirm he staked his future on the right person. Helton peered into Sam Darnold’s face mask.
“You can always see it in a quarterback’s eyes,” Helton said. “They’re either deer-in-the-headlights or they look at you like it’s just a practice. He’s always looked like, ‘Coach, don’t worry, I got this.’ And he was right. He always had it.”
Early this NFL season, Helton’s assertion forms the basis of a critical question for a league ever struggling to cultivate quarterbacks: Has Darnold always had this in him? Why did he lose it? And how he has he gotten it back?
Two weeks do not complete a reclamation. But Darnold’s first two weeks as the Minnesota Vikings’ starting quarterback could be what the beginning of one looks like. Once the third pick in the NFL draft and twice discarded by shambolic franchises, Darnold will lead the Vikings into Sunday’s showdown of 2-0 teams against the Houston Texans as one of the best passers of the young season.
On his fourth team at 27, Darnold has thrown for 9.5 yards per attempt (third in the NFL) with a 111.749 rating (fifth). Pro Football Focus grades Darnold as the fourth-best quarterback in the NFL. He piloted Minnesota’s offense even after star wideout Justin Jefferson was injured midway through Sunday’s 23-17 victory over the defending NFC champion San Francisco 49ers. Vikings Coach Kevin O’Connell, briefly an NFL quarterback himself, choked up as he began to praise Darnold at his news conference late Sunday afternoon.
“The amount of work that goes into that position on your quarterback journey when everybody decides that you cannot play,” O’Connell said. “We always believed in him. It felt awesome to watch him go do that thing.”
NFL teams understand quarterbacks are their lifeblood. They draft them earlier and pay them more than all other players. And yet the league generally remains clueless about how to identify and nurture them. The latest evidence arrived Monday when the Carolina Panthers benched 2023 first overall pick Bryce Young less than 20 games into his career. The last Panthers quarterback to start before the disastrous franchise handoff to Young? It was Darnold, jettisoned after a 4-2 finish that nearly sneaked Carolina into the playoffs.
Darnold spent 2023 as a San Francisco 49ers backup before the Vikings signed him to a one-year, $10 million contract. He became the unquestioned starter when first-round draft pick J.J. McCarthy suffered an offseason knee injury.
“I’m glad he’s had the kind of road that he’s had,” said Helton, now the head coach at Georgia Southern. “It makes him appreciate being part of a really good organization, a great coaching staff and good players around him. Sometimes, the right time and the right place happens. That’s kind of what’s happening right now for him.”
A tome could be written on the differences between good and bad NFL quarterbacking situations. “It’s not as simple as Kevin O’Connell and Justin Jefferson and insert-five-names-here,” said former NFL backup quarterback Jordan Palmer, a personal coach who counts Darnold among his many NFL clients.
But the Vikings have undeniably provided a platform unlike any Darnold had before. He throws behind a strong offensive line to an elite wideout in Jefferson. He plays in O’Connell’s quarterback-friendly system, similar to that of O’Connell’s former boss Sean McVay. He leads a franchise built on stable and competent infrastructure.
Palmer has staunchly believed Darnold would flourish. This week, he ticked off the essential attributes for successful NFL quarterbacks: They don’t cut corners in their work. They refocus themselves every offseason. Their motivations are pure. They have requisite arm talent and smarts. Darnold checked every box.
“It’s not a big group,” Palmer said. “Those guys, as they stay at it, it’s a matter of time and place before they get in a situation where they finally just have to play to the best of their abilities, and it’s going to keep them in every game with a chance to make a run at the end. It’s just going to be a matter of time. We’re seeing that with Geno Smith. We’re seeing that with Baker Mayfield. We’re seeing that with Derek Carr.”
After the Panthers dispatched Darnold, the 49ers signed him to be Brock Purdy’s backup. In Coach Kyle Shanahan’s system, he learned a lot of football. He also learned about himself. He had struggled in his early 20s in New York. He had fought for his job while losing in Carolina. Stepping back allowed him to reset — he could study without the pressure of taking a test. Even in practice, he took few on-field repetitions.
“When you’re at quarterback, a lot of times you can feel everything collapsing in on you,” Darnold said. “Not just in a game but as a whole. If things aren’t going your way, you can feel the weight of the world a little bit.”
Learning the game without playing it allowed Darnold to recapture the position’s essence. Underneath all the presnap reads and protection schemes, the game could still be simple. “Put the ball in your playmakers’ hands and let them go run and make a play,” Darnold said.
Darnold was ensconced in Shanahan’s culture, practicing and studying game plans for a franchise headed to its second Super Bowl appearance in five years.
“It’s less about being the backup for a year,” Palmer said. “It’s more about being the backup in the situation he was in — being around Kyle Shanahan for a year, being around Brock Purdy for a year, being around a locker room where all the best players on the team were actually the most bought-in and hardest-working. It’s not like that everywhere. That was Sam’s first exposure to playing an entire football season in a winning locker room.”
Shanahan hoped he could bring Darnold back, but he expected to lose him to a team that offered a clearer path to the field. Having spent a season with Darnold, one of the best coaches in the NFL believed he was an NFL starter.
“Just his talent level from college and what you’d seen in NFL and was exactly as good as advertised,” Shanahan said. “He’s such a good athlete, so tough, can make any throw. And really enjoyed working with him. I thought he got better throughout the year.”
DARNOLD’s SUCCESS is not strictly reliant on external factors. He’s still the same passer who finished fifth in the nation in passing yards at USC. He possesses prototypical size at 6-foot-3, 225 pounds. He runs faster than most fans realize — he scored five rushing touchdowns in the 2021 season, when he averaged 4.6 yards per carry.
“There’s some really exciting players at the top of the NFL right now at the quarterback position,” Palmer said. “Fans and media have it in their minds how it looks when they do it — how fast they are and how strong their arms are. People think there’s a gap between Sam Darnold and that group. I’m uniquely positioned to have this opinion: There is no gap.”
On Sunday, Darnold dropped back from his 3-yard line, stepped up in a crowded pocket and launched a pass 55 yards in the air over double coverage to Jefferson — “one of the prettiest throws I’ve seen,” O’Connell said. Jefferson sprinted for a 97-yard touchdown. Darnold later feathered a 10-yard touchdown pass to Jalen Nailor in the corner of the end zone.
“That is big-time quarterback play,” O’Connell said. “For all those folks out there that want some examples of it.”
“No flinch, no blink,” Vikings offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said. “There was a confidence about the way he dropped, stuck his foot in the ground.”
Darnold can play with clarity about his role. The Vikings signed him this offseason seemingly to provide a bridge to McCarthy. When McCarthy tore the meniscus in his right knee, requiring a surgery that will sideline him for the entire season, the Vikings became Darnold’s team. He believes he can grow further in O’Connell’s offense, and the returns of injured tight end T.J. Hockenson and wide receiver Jordan Addison will expand what O’Connell can call. “I’m not seeking comfort by any means,” Darnold said.
Darnold’s place in Minnesota beyond this season may be muddled. McCarthy will return. His contract will expire. Should he build on his start, though, his future will not be limited. He is young for his class and stayed in college only three years — he just turned 27 in June. Darnold is less than three years older than Michael Penix Jr. and Bo Nix, a pair of quarterbacks drafted in April.
“He got this opportunity because Sam more than deserves it,” Shanahan said. “Sam is a starting quarterback in this league, and he should run with it.”
O’Connell acknowledged that Darnold has benefited from the Vikings’ infrastructure. He also insisted Darnold has been as responsible for Minnesota’s success as the Vikings have been responsible for his. Darnold is not being propped up. He has merely been given a chance so many young quarterbacks are not, granted an opportunity to display what may have been there the whole time.
“Make no mistake about it,” O’Connell said. “This is Sam Darnold. This is who he is.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/20...im-become/
I hope Dan is finally the guy to get the Panthers built the right way.
The Vikings have provided a platform unlike any Sam Darnold had before, and the former Jets draft pick is thriving.
In the fourth week of the 2016 season, Clay Helton had turned his football team over to an 18-year-old redshirt freshman. On the Southern California sideline, amid the bedlam of Utah’s Rice-Eccles Stadium, the coach wanted to confirm he staked his future on the right person. Helton peered into Sam Darnold’s face mask.
“You can always see it in a quarterback’s eyes,” Helton said. “They’re either deer-in-the-headlights or they look at you like it’s just a practice. He’s always looked like, ‘Coach, don’t worry, I got this.’ And he was right. He always had it.”
Early this NFL season, Helton’s assertion forms the basis of a critical question for a league ever struggling to cultivate quarterbacks: Has Darnold always had this in him? Why did he lose it? And how he has he gotten it back?
Two weeks do not complete a reclamation. But Darnold’s first two weeks as the Minnesota Vikings’ starting quarterback could be what the beginning of one looks like. Once the third pick in the NFL draft and twice discarded by shambolic franchises, Darnold will lead the Vikings into Sunday’s showdown of 2-0 teams against the Houston Texans as one of the best passers of the young season.
On his fourth team at 27, Darnold has thrown for 9.5 yards per attempt (third in the NFL) with a 111.749 rating (fifth). Pro Football Focus grades Darnold as the fourth-best quarterback in the NFL. He piloted Minnesota’s offense even after star wideout Justin Jefferson was injured midway through Sunday’s 23-17 victory over the defending NFC champion San Francisco 49ers. Vikings Coach Kevin O’Connell, briefly an NFL quarterback himself, choked up as he began to praise Darnold at his news conference late Sunday afternoon.
“The amount of work that goes into that position on your quarterback journey when everybody decides that you cannot play,” O’Connell said. “We always believed in him. It felt awesome to watch him go do that thing.”
NFL teams understand quarterbacks are their lifeblood. They draft them earlier and pay them more than all other players. And yet the league generally remains clueless about how to identify and nurture them. The latest evidence arrived Monday when the Carolina Panthers benched 2023 first overall pick Bryce Young less than 20 games into his career. The last Panthers quarterback to start before the disastrous franchise handoff to Young? It was Darnold, jettisoned after a 4-2 finish that nearly sneaked Carolina into the playoffs.
Darnold spent 2023 as a San Francisco 49ers backup before the Vikings signed him to a one-year, $10 million contract. He became the unquestioned starter when first-round draft pick J.J. McCarthy suffered an offseason knee injury.
“I’m glad he’s had the kind of road that he’s had,” said Helton, now the head coach at Georgia Southern. “It makes him appreciate being part of a really good organization, a great coaching staff and good players around him. Sometimes, the right time and the right place happens. That’s kind of what’s happening right now for him.”
A tome could be written on the differences between good and bad NFL quarterbacking situations. “It’s not as simple as Kevin O’Connell and Justin Jefferson and insert-five-names-here,” said former NFL backup quarterback Jordan Palmer, a personal coach who counts Darnold among his many NFL clients.
But the Vikings have undeniably provided a platform unlike any Darnold had before. He throws behind a strong offensive line to an elite wideout in Jefferson. He plays in O’Connell’s quarterback-friendly system, similar to that of O’Connell’s former boss Sean McVay. He leads a franchise built on stable and competent infrastructure.
Palmer has staunchly believed Darnold would flourish. This week, he ticked off the essential attributes for successful NFL quarterbacks: They don’t cut corners in their work. They refocus themselves every offseason. Their motivations are pure. They have requisite arm talent and smarts. Darnold checked every box.
“It’s not a big group,” Palmer said. “Those guys, as they stay at it, it’s a matter of time and place before they get in a situation where they finally just have to play to the best of their abilities, and it’s going to keep them in every game with a chance to make a run at the end. It’s just going to be a matter of time. We’re seeing that with Geno Smith. We’re seeing that with Baker Mayfield. We’re seeing that with Derek Carr.”
After the Panthers dispatched Darnold, the 49ers signed him to be Brock Purdy’s backup. In Coach Kyle Shanahan’s system, he learned a lot of football. He also learned about himself. He had struggled in his early 20s in New York. He had fought for his job while losing in Carolina. Stepping back allowed him to reset — he could study without the pressure of taking a test. Even in practice, he took few on-field repetitions.
“When you’re at quarterback, a lot of times you can feel everything collapsing in on you,” Darnold said. “Not just in a game but as a whole. If things aren’t going your way, you can feel the weight of the world a little bit.”
Learning the game without playing it allowed Darnold to recapture the position’s essence. Underneath all the presnap reads and protection schemes, the game could still be simple. “Put the ball in your playmakers’ hands and let them go run and make a play,” Darnold said.
Darnold was ensconced in Shanahan’s culture, practicing and studying game plans for a franchise headed to its second Super Bowl appearance in five years.
“It’s less about being the backup for a year,” Palmer said. “It’s more about being the backup in the situation he was in — being around Kyle Shanahan for a year, being around Brock Purdy for a year, being around a locker room where all the best players on the team were actually the most bought-in and hardest-working. It’s not like that everywhere. That was Sam’s first exposure to playing an entire football season in a winning locker room.”
Shanahan hoped he could bring Darnold back, but he expected to lose him to a team that offered a clearer path to the field. Having spent a season with Darnold, one of the best coaches in the NFL believed he was an NFL starter.
“Just his talent level from college and what you’d seen in NFL and was exactly as good as advertised,” Shanahan said. “He’s such a good athlete, so tough, can make any throw. And really enjoyed working with him. I thought he got better throughout the year.”
DARNOLD’s SUCCESS is not strictly reliant on external factors. He’s still the same passer who finished fifth in the nation in passing yards at USC. He possesses prototypical size at 6-foot-3, 225 pounds. He runs faster than most fans realize — he scored five rushing touchdowns in the 2021 season, when he averaged 4.6 yards per carry.
“There’s some really exciting players at the top of the NFL right now at the quarterback position,” Palmer said. “Fans and media have it in their minds how it looks when they do it — how fast they are and how strong their arms are. People think there’s a gap between Sam Darnold and that group. I’m uniquely positioned to have this opinion: There is no gap.”
On Sunday, Darnold dropped back from his 3-yard line, stepped up in a crowded pocket and launched a pass 55 yards in the air over double coverage to Jefferson — “one of the prettiest throws I’ve seen,” O’Connell said. Jefferson sprinted for a 97-yard touchdown. Darnold later feathered a 10-yard touchdown pass to Jalen Nailor in the corner of the end zone.
“That is big-time quarterback play,” O’Connell said. “For all those folks out there that want some examples of it.”
“No flinch, no blink,” Vikings offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said. “There was a confidence about the way he dropped, stuck his foot in the ground.”
Darnold can play with clarity about his role. The Vikings signed him this offseason seemingly to provide a bridge to McCarthy. When McCarthy tore the meniscus in his right knee, requiring a surgery that will sideline him for the entire season, the Vikings became Darnold’s team. He believes he can grow further in O’Connell’s offense, and the returns of injured tight end T.J. Hockenson and wide receiver Jordan Addison will expand what O’Connell can call. “I’m not seeking comfort by any means,” Darnold said.
Darnold’s place in Minnesota beyond this season may be muddled. McCarthy will return. His contract will expire. Should he build on his start, though, his future will not be limited. He is young for his class and stayed in college only three years — he just turned 27 in June. Darnold is less than three years older than Michael Penix Jr. and Bo Nix, a pair of quarterbacks drafted in April.
“He got this opportunity because Sam more than deserves it,” Shanahan said. “Sam is a starting quarterback in this league, and he should run with it.”
O’Connell acknowledged that Darnold has benefited from the Vikings’ infrastructure. He also insisted Darnold has been as responsible for Minnesota’s success as the Vikings have been responsible for his. Darnold is not being propped up. He has merely been given a chance so many young quarterbacks are not, granted an opportunity to display what may have been there the whole time.
“Make no mistake about it,” O’Connell said. “This is Sam Darnold. This is who he is.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/20...im-become/
I hope Dan is finally the guy to get the Panthers built the right way.
