You can, if you are a Vikings fan, try to find comfort in narratives or even truth about how the team’s quarterback situation played out over the last year.
You can remember how overmatched Sam Darnold looked in his last two games in purple, first in a crushing loss to the Detroit Lions that cost the Vikings the No. 1 seed in 2024 and then in an even worse defeat against the Los Angeles Rams in a one-and-done postseason.
You can retrace the steps and still agree with the conclusion the Vikings reached, one that most people were on board with as it happened: Darnold was going to be both expensive to re-sign and limited in his ceiling. The Vikings drafted J.J. McCarthy No. 10 overall in 2024 for a reason, and 2025 was the time to find out about him.
Darnold signing with the Seattle Seahawks seemed like a safe win-win. He got paid by a seemingly mid-tier team after resurrecting his career, and the Vikings were free to reap the benefits of the increased spending at other positions afforded to them by McCarthy’s inexpensive rookie contract.
All of that can be true and so can this: The way the season actually played out was an unmitigated disaster capped by Darnold playing like a franchise QB in leading the Seahawks to a Super Bowl berth Sunday, Jan. 26, while the Vikings sit at home pondering their QB future.
It is peak Vikings, as Patrick Reusse and I talked about on Monday’s Daily Delivery podcast.
We might as well rip off the Band-Aid in today’s 10 things to know:
- One narrative Vikings fans (and decision-makers, probably) have tried to comfort themselves with through Seattle’s 14-3 season and run to the Super Bowl is that the Vikings could not have duplicated the Seahawks’ success this year. Never mind that the Vikings also went 14-3 with Darnold as their QB in 2024. Never mind that the Vikings had 25-1 odds (compared with 60-1 for Seattle) to win the Super Bowl at the start of the season, even with the QB situations taken into consideration.
- This could have happened here. It would have taken better decisions last offseason and a level of play we didn’t see from the offensive line in 2025. But it could have happened. Don’t fool yourself. The Vikings would have been in the playoffs with competent QB play this season, and they would have won the NFC North with the above-average quality of play from Darnold, who was basically the same QB in Seattle he was in Minnesota but without having to carry the offense to the same degree.
- None of this is to say that the Vikings explicitly made the wrong decisions. The worst part of all of this is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Nobody knew the Seahawks would be this good. Nobody, certainly not the Vikings decision-makers paid the most to know, could have predicted just how ill-prepared McCarthy would look when he was healthy and it mattered this season.
- But it is another chapter in a long book of what-ifs for Minnesota sports and the Vikings in particular. By the time the Super Bowl after this one rolls around in February 2027 ― the next one the Vikings can play in ― it will have been more than a half-century since the Vikings even participated in a Super Bowl.
- I get the feeling a good number of Vikings fans are happy for Darnold even if they are frustrated by the events of 2025. What’s next? Darnold, a la Kevin Garnett with the Boston Celtics, hoisting a trophy in two weeks and incoherently shouting ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE?
- To further extend the what-if game with this year’s Super Bowl QBs, let’s go back to the 2023 season. The Vikings were 1-4 at one point. If they had fully tanked, especially after Kirk Cousins was injured, they might have been in position to draft Super Bowl QB Drake Maye in 2024 instead of New England. Or if they had completed their miraculous rally and made the playoffs that season, they might have been picking too low to take McCarthy (or any other QB) in 2024. Maybe they still would have signed Darnold as a bridge QB and then kept him long-term after their 14-3 season with no heir apparent in the wings. Instead, they went 7-10.
- Anyway, thinking about the Vikings is strangely a nice distraction from the real world. The heaviness of what is happening in Minnesota is weighing on a lot of minds, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with the Wolves’ no-show Sunday against the Golden State Warriors.
- Vikings radio play-by-play voice and KFAN morning host Paul Allen apologized Monday for comments he made on Friday’s show about so-called “paid protesters.” In a statement read at the start of his usual 9-noon time slot, he said he would be taking a few days off. Paul Charchian filled in on the rest of the show.
- Chip Scoggins, who will be my guest on Tuesday’s podcast to talk mainly about the Twins and new primary owner Tom Pohlad, has a great story up on Wolves and Lynx CEO Matt Caldwell.
- The Gophers women’s basketball team routed Wisconsin 88-53, with the 35-point margin representing their largest victory in a long history against the Badgers.
