Sam Darnold is about to get paid: How it affects his free agency, J.J. McCarthy and the Vikings

EAGAN, Minn. -- The restoration of Sam Darnold's career truly began on the morning of April 25, 43 days after he signed a one-year free agent deal with the Minnesota Vikings.

It was draft day, and Minnesota was preparing to take a franchise quarterback in the first round. But they viewed Darnold, the No. 3 pick in the 2018 draft, as more than insurance for the rookie, and coach Kevin O'Connell wanted Darnold to hear that directly from the source.

So O'Connell summoned Darnold to his office for a 10:30 a.m. meeting and, for 45 minutes on a time-crunched day, he explained the plan. The Vikings' draft pick (who turned out to be Michigan's J.J. McCarthy at No. 10) would not be rushed onto the field, O'Connell told Darnold.

There were no guarantees of how much Darnold would play in 2024, but O'Connell emphasized what a good fit he thought Darnold was for the Vikings and made clear he could be an important part of the team's success, O'Connell said in an interview with ESPN this summer.

Reserved by nature, Darnold was touched. After blowing through three teams in five seasons, he had landed with a coach and an organization with a plan to rebuild his confidence.

That foundational moment remains instructive, as Darnold -- transformed in every way that matters on a football field -- leads the 11-2 Vikings into Monday night's game against the Chicago Bears (8:20 p.m. ET, ESPN/ABC) in front of a home crowd that has taken to chanting "MVP" when he appears on videoboards.

"He's playing so well," O'Connell said, "and he's so rooted in the moment."

IN WHAT WAS already a career-best season, Darnold hit his stride over the past month. He has thrown for 1,158 yards with 11 touchdowns and no interceptions over the past four games. He has engineered three game-winning drives during that stretch and led the league in completions on passes of at least 15 air yards, putting himself on pace for a 4,100-yard, 35-touchdown season.

Darnold has played well enough to leave the Vikings more open-minded about their 2025 plans than many realize, according to sources familiar with the Vikings' thinking. They have not ruled out offering him a contract for next season, despite widespread assumptions they will let him sign elsewhere in free agency and hand the job to McCarthy, who has spent his rookie season recovering from a torn meniscus in his right knee.

Whether Darnold receives a more lucrative offer elsewhere remains to be determined, as quarterback-needy teams are just beginning the process of assessing his season. But he raised eyebrows earlier this month when he told Fox Sports reporter Pam Oliver: "There's no other place I'd rather play. Just so grateful to be a Viking."

Other public comments have emphasized Darnold's mind will always be "where my feet are." He has refused to speculate about how his performance will impact his future, or reflect on his experiences. In the meantime, the Vikings have also engaged in a delicate semantic dance.

O'Connell has encouraged Darnold's focus on his daily routine and praised him last week for being "so demanding of himself, but [also] the way he hasn't put the weight of the world on his shoulders." General manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah hasn't spoken publicly since before the season began, but he has often deferred to O'Connell on quarterback decisions.

While the Vikings' decision-makers remain open-minded on 2025, they put some strategies in place to prepare for an eventual parting of the ways if it happens.

To optimize McCarthy's development while on injured reserve, Darnold agreed to wear a modified camera on his helmet during practices and walk-throughs. McCarthy uses the video to simulate practice reps via virtual reality. The Vikings also signed veteran quarterback Daniel Jones, who was released by the New York Giants, to their practice squad last month, a move widely viewed as an early look at a potential candidate to replace Darnold next season as the veteran alongside McCarthy.

Any concerns about rattling or distracting Darnold with those efforts have been rendered moot by his performance. Darnold has accomplished so much this season, offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said last week, that there is no need to worry about next steps as the Vikings (11-2) push to make a deep playoff run.

"In my mind, I would hope he would say, 'The body of work that I've put in so far is going to take care of the future, so really all I need to worry about is right now,'" Phillips said. "I think we all know that Sam is going to be a sought-after type of guy from wherever that may be. So whatever his future ends up being, I know all of us in this building are going to be happy for him.

"I don't think he has to worry about that anymore. I think the worry might have been this is my opportunity to play. He's past all that. He's proven the doubters [wrong] and he's proven that he can play in this league. So let's just make this the best possible season we can have starting this week."

OVER THE PAST month, NFL team executives contacted by ESPN about the Vikings' situation with Darnold have most commonly raised comparisons to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' experience with quarterback Baker Mayfield, drafted two spots ahead of Darnold in 2018. They were briefly Carolina Panthers teammates in 2022.

Mayfield signed a one-year, $4 million contract to compete for the Buccaneers' starting job in 2023. After winning the gig, throwing for 4,044 yards and 28 touchdowns and leading the Buccaneers to the divisional round of the playoffs, he re-signed for three years and $100 million last spring. The deal included $30 million fully guaranteed in 2024 and another $10 million for 2025. Mayfield entered Week 15 tied for third -- with Darnold -- with 28 touchdown passes, and Mayfield is fourth with 3,329 yards for a Bucs team that leads the NFC South.

Darnold ranks first on ESPN's list of pending free agent quarterbacks, ahead of Justin Fields. The Mayfield deal would be on the lower end of what Darnold could expect this spring, an AFC team executive said, citing the relatively thin 2025 draft class compared to 2024.

In the meantime, the executive said, the league will try to understand how much of Darnold's success is based on his own maturation and development and how much should be attributed to O'Connell's system and playcalling, along with the presence of elite-level pass catchers in Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison and T.J. Hockenson.

"What's Darnold doing versus what's the product of the [Vikings' system]?" the executive said. "The first half of the season he's playing with a lead every game. Now their games have gotten stickier and he's doing more. That could be a trend."

At the very least, Darnold has matched his arm strength with the talent around him. He leads the NFL with 17 completions that have traveled at least 20 yards past the line of scrimmage, including touchdowns of 97 and 52 yards to Jefferson and 49 and 47 to Addison.

"He definitely has that strong arm," Jefferson said, "to just be able to fit those throws into tight windows and just be able to run those deep throws and be able to take the top off defenses. Those are things that defenses got to respect. ... We feel like the whole playbook is kind of open toward Sam being able to throw it all across the field."

Said Hockenson: "I love seeing Sam let those balls loose. He'll throw one deep, and it's fun to watch. It kind of just soars through the air. It looks like he just flicks it and it goes away. It's fun to see that happen."

Darnold's recent surge has clouded the fact that, as recently as two weeks ago, he was leading the NFL with 14 turnovers. He hit rock bottom during a 12-7 victory in Week 10 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, when he threw three interceptions on balls targeted for Jefferson. O'Connell defended him after that game, saying Darnold had the talent and capacity to play much better and insisting he had never considered benching him.

"Looking back on that game," Darnold said, "I wasn't too disappointed in the decisions that I made. It was where I located the ball or how I threw the ball I was more disappointed with.

"The biggest thing for me is just continuing to make good decisions and being able to, when I do let the ball rip, let it rip with confidence."

Could Darnold maintain that confidence elsewhere? The Vikings are in position to render that question moot. They could apply the franchise tag to Darnold at a cost of roughly $40 million for 2025 or give him their own version of the Mayfield contract before the free agent market opens. Another option is to trade him after using the franchise tag.

Darnold will turn 28 in June, and there isn't a notable recent history of NFL teams allowing younger quarterbacks to leave without compensation at the risk of watching them go on to have successful careers elsewhere.

The most glaring example is Drew Brees leaving the San Diego Chargers to sign with the New Orleans Saints via free agency in 2006 when he was 27. Even that decision, however, was complicated by a shoulder injury and the presence of backup Philip Rivers, whom the Chargers drafted in 2004 and went on to throw for 63,440 yards and 421 touchdowns over 17 seasons.

Is Darnold a rare example of a player otherwise destined for stardom who simply encountered historically bad environments during his time with the New York Jets and the Panthers? That's the question the Vikings must answer, one that team sources insist they have not yet done. Realistic teammates, however, know Darnold is about to get paid.

"He's a great dude and I love him being a part of the team," right tackle Brian O'Neill said. "So from that perspective, you want everybody to go make a billion dollars. You want somebody who's worked hard, been through a lot of stuff, been through some bad situations in the past, to come out on the other side and get rewarded for it."

IS MCCARTHY THE Philip Rivers of the Chargers' 2006 scenario? The Vikings not only have to answer that question, but their decision on Darnold will be predicated at least in part on whether McCarthy can be Rivers in 2025 or if his timeline will be pushed back.

Before he tore his meniscus Aug. 10, the Vikings had grown increasingly excited about the likelihood that he would be ready to play this season -- and there was an outside chance that he could have beaten out Darnold for the Week 1 starter's job. The injury not only set back those plans, but they also limited his capacity for developing over the course of his rookie season.

NFL rules prohibit players on injured reserve from participating in or even attending practice, regardless of whether their injuries are healed. The best McCarthy has been able to do is use the footage from Darnold's helmet camera, which provides audio of the playcall in the huddle, a view of protection calls on the line of scrimmage and the sequence of Darnold's reads based on coverage.

The video can be transferred to a wall of screens in the Vikings' draft room, according to Wes Phillips, giving McCarthy a life-size view of the field. More commonly, however, he watches it with a virtual reality visor. He can also attend and participate in all quarterback and team meetings behind the scenes.

"He's doing everything he can to be ready when his time comes," Phillips said.

From a physical standpoint, McCarthy recently "turned a corner," O'Connell said. His initial recovery included six weeks of essentially being immobile, forcing him to ride a scooter around the team facility. Swelling developed in early November as he began to ramp up his recovery work, requiring a second procedure on Nov. 11 that resulted in a PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injection.

McCarthy hasn't spoken to Minnesota reporters since Sept. 6, but in a Nov. 26 appearance on "The L.A.B. Podcast" with former Michigan tight end Jake Butt, he said his knee "is on the road that they told me it was going to be on, which was up and down, sideways, backwards, all the way around."

"The PRP; got that done," McCarthy added. "So going in there and having to get cut open wasn't great, but it's all right because it's part of the process. I'm in a good spot now."

Has he done enough to allow the Vikings to let Darnold depart? Former Vikings general manager Rick Spielman, for one, doesn't think so.

"He's a rookie," Spielman said last week of McCarthy, while speaking on the "With the First Pick" podcast. "He's going to start over from scratch. He didn't do anything this year. He's not practicing. He's sitting in meetings. He's rehabbing. He hasn't done one thing since that surgery except rehab, throw the ball on the side, maybe, but he's not practicing. So you're starting from square one with him."

Spielman doesn't have the same access as Vikings coaches and executives to the details of McCarthy's behind-the-scenes work. Speaking last week, O'Connell said McCarthy has been "really good staying true to the priorities that we have in place." The two have met on a weekly basis since the injury to help replicate the process they will one day follow for real.

"[McCarthy is] really getting to a place where he's healthy," O'Connell said, "and now it can be more about the physical side of things moving forward. He's starting that process and kind of in the middle of it right now. ... I know this: When I meet with him one-on-one every week, he's got great questions, and they're very in depth and really shows me a guy that's learning, not just the top layer. He's really trying to consume a lot of information as if he was playing. So it's been great to hear that."

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MEANWHILE, JONES' PRESENCE is a reminder there may be another possibility. If Darnold departs and McCarthy isn't healthy by summer, the Vikings could re-sign Jones for a similar short-term revival.

"We've just challenged [Jones] to absorb all the information," O'Connell said, "and using that as a barometer of where we want to take our teaching moving forward as we systematically build him up. He's very smart. ... He looks like a guy, when he throws a football, that's played a lot of football. And in the pocket, his feel. So, it's been fun to have him here. I think he's doing a great job. Little by little, getting him more comfortable with what we do around here."

In the meantime, the Vikings are in the midst of an unexpected playoff push. ESPN's Football Power Index projected them for 6.8 victories when the season began amid their quarterback transition, a win total they surpassed during the second week of November. FPI now gives them the NFL's seventh-best chance to win the Super Bowl (5.9%).

If you're looking for Darnold, though, he won't be hard to find. Speaking last Wednesday, he said he has learned to focus only on "what's important right now -- and that's having a really good Wednesday practice."

"I've kind of always understood how important it is to be where my feet are, to just be locked in in the moment," he added. "Because when you're not, when you start thinking about things in the future or things that might have happened in the past, you stop [focusing on] what's important."