I'm really interested to see where Sam Darnold ends up, and on what kind of contract. On the one hand, he's a 27-year-old coming off a Pro Bowl season, leading his team to 14 wins. Those seem like facts that could earn him a fortune in today's NFL. But there are negatives.
For one thing, there's no getting around that he played his two worst games of the season in Minnesota's two biggest games of the year: at Detroit in Week 18, costing Minnesota the NFC North and the conference's top seed, and then a week later, in the playoff loss at Los Angeles against the Rams. The Vikings were blown off the field in both games, with Darnold imploding while completing just half his passes and absorbing 11 sacks.
And the larger body of work is also terrible. Up until his breakout season in Kevin O'Connell's offense, his career was pretty much a disaster.
Since entering the league as the No. 3 overall pick in 2018, Darnold's three years with the Jets and two years in Carolina (plus one start with San Francisco) were about as bad as it gets for an NFL quarterback. Based on passer rating, no quarterback who started at least 50 games in that time frame was worse than he was.
Twenty-six quarterbacks started that many games from 2018-2023, Patrick Mahomes shows up at the top of that passer rating table. Darnold shows up at the bottom. He averaged exactly an interception per game, a big part of that poor figure.
| QUARTERBACKS, 2018-2023 (MINIMUM 50 STARTS) | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Player | GS | Cmp | Att | Cmp% | Yds | TD | Int | Rate |
| Patrick Mahomes | 95 | 2364 | 3555 | 66.5 | 28140 | 219 | 62 | 103.7 |
| Aaron Rodgers | 82 | 1813 | 2766 | 65.5 | 20553 | 162 | 27 | 103.1 |
| Kirk Cousins | 88 | 2093 | 3081 | 67.9 | 23265 | 171 | 55 | 101.2 |
| Russell Wilson | 92 | 1853 | 2831 | 65.5 | 21477 | 173 | 50 | 101.2 |
| Deshaun Watson | 59 | 1264 | 1885 | 67.1 | 15057 | 99 | 37 | 100.6 |
| Dak Prescott | 82 | 1976 | 2924 | 67.6 | 22468 | 157 | 57 | 100.2 |
| Joe Burrow | 52 | 1288 | 1895 | 68 | 14083 | 97 | 37 | 98.6 |
| Lamar Jackson | 77 | 1362 | 2112 | 64.5 | 15887 | 125 | 45 | 98.0 |
| Jimmy Garoppolo | 56 | 1094 | 1623 | 67.4 | 13244 | 82 | 46 | 97.3 |
| Tua Tagovailoa | 51 | 1096 | 1638 | 66.9 | 12639 | 81 | 37 | 97.1 |
| Ryan Tannehill | 74 | 1410 | 2127 | 66.3 | 16426 | 110 | 49 | 97.1 |
| Tom Brady | 82 | 2124 | 3245 | 65.5 | 23055 | 161 | 52 | 96.1 |
| Matthew Stafford | 81 | 1829 | 2799 | 65.3 | 21298 | 141 | 62 | 95.8 |
| Derek Carr | 97 | 2198 | 3259 | 67.4 | 24410 | 139 | 63 | 95.7 |
| Justin Herbert | 62 | 1613 | 2422 | 66.6 | 17223 | 114 | 42 | 95.7 |
| Jared Goff | 95 | 2249 | 3425 | 65.7 | 25536 | 152 | 68 | 94.4 |
| Matt Ryan | 76 | 1921 | 2871 | 66.9 | 20996 | 121 | 57 | 94.1 |
| Josh Allen | 93 | 1989 | 3145 | 63.2 | 22703 | 167 | 78 | 92.2 |
| Kyler Murray | 65 | 1492 | 2239 | 66.6 | 15647 | 94 | 46 | 92.2 |
| Jalen Hurts | 51 | 1000 | 1578 | 63.4 | 11764 | 67 | 34 | 91.1 |
| Carson Wentz | 64 | 1429 | 2261 | 63.2 | 15214 | 104 | 46 | 89.6 |
| Baker Mayfield | 86 | 1750 | 2825 | 61.9 | 20332 | 130 | 74 | 88.1 |
| Andy Dalton | 54 | 1191 | 1898 | 62.8 | 12977 | 79 | 51 | 85.5 |
| Daniel Jones | 59 | 1221 | 1900 | 64.3 | 12512 | 62 | 40 | 85.2 |
| Trevor Lawrence | 50 | 1116 | 1750 | 63.8 | 11770 | 58 | 39 | 85.0 |
| Sam Darnold | 56 | 1082 | 1811 | 59.7 | 12064 | 63 | 56 | 78.3 |
Search tools at pro-football-reference.com used in compiling this table.
Passer rating isn't everything, and guys can get better. Baker Mayfield, for example, shows up near the bottom of the table, and he seems to have turned things around. Trevor Lawrence just slightly better than Darnold, and his job isn't in danger. And Darnold's rating with the Vikings last year was 102.5, which would put him in the top 3, up there with Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers.
But if Darnold doesn't get the huge contract his play last season (until the very end) seems to warrant, it will probably be because of teams looking at that larger body of work. Guys can get better, but is one season in a passer-friendly system going to be viewed as what to expect from Darnold going forward? I think it's more likely teams will tread cautiously.
He's going to sign a big contract, it's the nature of the league. But some teams in need of a quarterback will probably hesitate to pay the going rate based on Darnold's 2024. They'll look at the career numbers and opt to let someone else take the plunge.
As for where I think he'll end up...I'll go with the Raiders. They have a long history of taking a chance on well-traveled veteran quarterbacks, and some of those guys have been successful with them. (Including another former Viking, Rich Gannon.) Different decision-makers, but Darnold to the Raiders seems to make the most sense.
--Andy Richardson