Vikings didn't even need to play yet to be proven right about Sam Darnold

The Minnesota Vikings won't make their 2025 debut until Monday night, when they travel to Soldier Field to face off against the Chicago Bears. But already, you can count them among the winners of Week 1: Because no matter how J.J. McCarthy's first NFL start shakes out, it'll be preferable to being on the hook for Sam Darnold's contract with the Seattle Seahawks.

Darnold made his Seahawks debut at home against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, and he looked ... well, he looked exactly like the player he'd been every year prior to arriving in Minnesota last offseason. He completed 16-of-23 passes for 150 yards, no touchdowns and a back-breaking fourth-quarter fumble that salted away a 17-13 loss.

Granted, Darnold didn't have a ton of help: Seattle couldn't run the ball much at all against a ferocious San Francisco front, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba was just about the only viable option in the passing game. He was reasonably efficient and accurate in a tough spot in the first week of a new offense under Klint Kubiak. All things told, he was totally fine — hardly terrible, but also not the sort of player who's going to elevate the roster around him.

Which, really, is the whole point: Even if Darnold has learned from his time in Minnesota and stabilized as a player, he's not the sort of guy who's going to mask flaws and carry you to a title. Rather than pay him something approximating that player just because the quarterback market dictates it, the Vikings stuck to their guns, and they'll be better off for it in the long run no matter what.

Passing on a Sam Darnold megadeal was the easiest move of the Vikings' offseason

Much was made about Minnesota's perceived quarterback dilemma this offseason. Sam Darnold had been such a revelation in Kevin O'Connell's offense; could the Vikings really just let him walk in free agency in lieu of a completely untested second-year player who also happened to be recovering from major knee surgery? To hear anonymous sources tell it, Minnesota was torn: One day they were committed to McCarthy, the next they were sending mixed signals, the next they were so unsure that they were considering a run at Aaron Rodgers.

Of course, in reality, that dilemma wasn't much of a dilemma at all. the Vikings used a first-round pick on McCarthy in 2024 both because they believed that he was good enough to be the guy and because they valued the incredible flexibility that comes with a starting quarterback on a rookie contract. The fact that a year in Minnesota completely revitalized Darnold's career was in actuality an argument against re-signing him — if O'Connell could do that with a player who looked utterly lost across his first few seasons in the NFL, why not do it again with a good prospect at a fraction of the cost?

Less than one full week into the 2025 season, that very obvious line of thinking has been proven correct already. McCarthy doesn't have to be a transcendent talent in his own right, especially not right away; the coaching staff and talent around him are such that this team can succeed even if O'Connell keeps the training wheels on. And that's true precisely because they opted against paying Darnold, rerouting that money to overhaul the interior of the team's offensive line.

It would be one thing if Minnesota had to choose between paying Darnold and getting stuck in quarterback purgatory, too good to draft a meaningful prospect and without many appealing options in free agency. In that case, making what amounts to a two-year commitment to Darnold would have made sense as the cleanest way to give a talented roster a chance to compete in the NFC North. But the Vikings knew they had a plan B already in house, one that they had every reason to believe O'Connell could get roughly equivalent production out of at the absolute worst. The floor in Minnesota is that high, and there was no reason to make sacrifices for a player who's succeeded at carving out a role for himself in the NFL but who is hardly worth the money he's making.