As college football season approached seven years ago, Sam Darnold was widely regarded as the sure-fire first overall pick in the 2018 draft. By April, he slipped two spots.
By 2020, he slipped off the roster of the team that drafted him.
With Vikings first-round rookie J.J. McCarthy possibly missing all of 2024, Darnold could be getting his best chance to thrive in the NFL. For a variety of reasons.
When quarterbacks bust, not enough attention is placed on the players around the quarterback. Or the coaches. Or the front office. Or the owners. The Jets have a long and distinguished history of wrecking young quarterbacks. If Darnold hadn’t been picked by them, who knows what he might have been?
His second stop doesn’t reveal much about the player, either. He landed with a Panthers franchise that was on the Slip-'N'-Slide of dysfunction, with Matt Rhule literally out of his coaching league.
Last year, Darnold wasn’t needed in San Francisco; he eventually started a late-season game, after the 49ers secured the No. 1 seed in the NFC. This year, he goes from being a placeholder to the actual wire-to-wire starter, if McCarthy’s knee injury knocks him out for all of 2024.
That’s the other benefit to Darnold. If McCarthy ends up on the shelf for 2024, there won’t be any question of when McCarthy will start. It will be Darnold, all year long.
With receiver Justin Jefferson, a very good offensive line, a coach who knows how to scheme receivers open, and a running back in Aaron Jones who has gas in the tank, Darnold could finally put it together. And he’s not raw. While only 27, he has started 57 regular-season games.
Fifty-eight seems like a given. By January, he could be up to 73. With 17 of them in the best circumstances he’s ever seen in his entire career.