In 2024, Sam Darnold and the Vikings beat all but two of the teams on their schedule. The two teams to which they lost — the Lions and Rams — beat them twice each.
The Vikings recovered from the Week 6 and Week 7 losses to Detroit and L.A. to land on the brink of the NFC’s top seed. They did not recover from the Week 18 and Wild Card second act.
During his introductory press conference with the Seahawks, Darnold was asked about any lessons he might have learned from his late-season struggles.
“I was waiting for someone to bring that up, by the way,” Darnold said. “I appreciate that. It’s fair. You get all the way to that point, and you have the season that we had offensively as a team, and at the end of the day only one team can win the Super Bowl. Unfortunately we weren’t that team. But I learned a ton from those last two games, especially, playing Detroit and playing L.A. We are going to see L.A. twice a year, obviously, playing in this division and really looking forward to that. It’s just continuing to learn. Learning things about yourself, what they did schematically, and yeah, that’s basically all you can do is just learn from those experiences.”
The playoff loss wasn’t his fault. The Week 18 loss — with the No. 1 seed on the line — was. He consistently overthrew passes when the Vikings had opportunities to score touchdowns in the first half. The outcome easily could have been very different, which would have given Minnesota a week off and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
Darnold didn’t get specific as to what he learned. Ultimately, it’s less about learning something new and more about whether he’ll revert to air-mailing passes the next time the stakes are as high as they were during the last game of the 2024 regular season.
