Well, hello there! As a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, I’m glad you could be here. You probably came here when you saw the sign out front that read “Free J.J. McCarthy Copium,” or “Fans For Short King Quarterbacks,” but I assure you this isn’t a trap. This is an intervention.
We all want the Vikings to succeed, but as training camp approaches, things have gotten a little intense. The quarterback battle between McCarthy and Kyler Murray is the most heated thing since Kirk Cousins left for a giant bag of fully guaranteed cash, and it has both sides at each other’s throats.
But before social media merchants post videos from last year’s camp and this year’s highlights are played with the most generic hip-hop beat you’ve ever heard, there is one thing we all should know:
It’s time to let go of Sam Darnold.
That may sound preposterous. Darnold isn’t here. He left last season and won a Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks. Still, the Vikings ushered in a new era with Nolan Teasley, who was part of that front office. It feels like they are trying to make U.S. Bank Stadium feel like Lumen Field without the Space Needle. Beyond that, Darnold is still hovering over this training camp because of what McCarthy and Murray could become.
Let’s take a step back a second. A year ago, McCarthy was the quarterback of the future. Many expected a learning curve but didn’t anticipate the baggage that came with it.
As Vikings fans, we should have known better. But how did we know that a high ankle sprain would become a “soft benching” conspiracy? If you put money on Max Brosmer becoming a thing, you probably earned a few dollars. There were other weird things like the “Nine” meme, a defiant Griddy into the end zone, and sideline theatrics made it so that the Vikings couldn’t go into this season without giving McCarthy fair competition.
Even the staunchest McCarthy supporter would probably admit that’s what’s best for the franchise. But this is where the Darnold factor hovers above the competition.
You see, before Darnold came to Minnesota, he was a laughing stock. Many remembered him from “seeing ghosts” as a member of the New York Jets and flaming out after a trade to the Carolina Panthers. After spending time with two dysfunctional franchises, he straightened himself out with the San Francisco 49ers and blossomed into an MVP candidate with the Vikings in 2024.
However, Darnold’s poor performance in the final two games left a lasting impression, and they sent him out of the state faster than a visitor from Waukesha who decided it would be funny to wear a Green Bay Packers jersey to a Vikings training camp practice. (There’s always one.)
But few saw what was coming next. Darnold went on to win the Super Bowl in Seattle, and it changed the way that many fans viewed McCarthy. After the Vikings showed signs of life following O’Connell’s watered-down offense, Vikings fans believe that McCarthy can someday become Darnold and that all he needed was time and a loving infrastructure to reach his potential.
That seems possible, but it also feels like a best-case scenario. Darnold played poorly with the Jets and Panthers. But McCarthy was historically bad with the Vikings last season. Expecting him to even become a starter at this point is a leap of faith. It may never happen, whether in Minneapolis or elsewhere.
I’ve probably got the McCarthy fans riled up and racing to open their TikTok apps, but you guys are only part of the problem. If you guys have Darnold dancing around in the back of your mind, imagine what the Murray crowd is feeling.
Murray is coming out of his own dysfunctional situation with the Arizona Cardinals, and it’s fully expected he’ll snap out of it in Minnesota. While Darnold was a mess early in his career, Murray has shown flashes of brilliance and is in the best situation since Arizona drafted him first-overall in 2019.
But it’s not just me saying it. ESPN is saying it. Sports Illustrated is saying it. Bleacher Report is saying it. Cris Carter is saying it, along with anyone who can open a depth chart.
With O’Connell by his side and a dual-threat scrambling ability the Vikings rarely have had, there’s a lot of upside there if Murray figures out the offense during training camp. But that also sets an unrealistic standard of expectations.
Darnold is a traditional pocket passer who hunts downfield for big plays. Murray gets the ball out quickly and has to scramble around to see over the gigantic linemen in front of him. Murray has also targeted elite players before, including wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins and tight end Trey McBride. But all it ever got him was an embarrassing Wild Card loss on national television at the end of the 2021 season.
That doesn’t mean that Murray can’t succeed with the Vikings. But if your expectation is “The Next Sam Darnold,” you’re bound to be disappointed.
That leaves us with the current situation. No matter if McCarthy or Murray wins the starting job, they’re unlikely to do what Darnold did for the Vikings two years ago. That could be an argument for the Darnold stans – who weren’t invited to today’s meeting for obvious reasons – but it also would have been a tough bar for him to clear even if he had stayed in Minnesota.
If anything, Vikings fans need to let Darnold go. He’s happy, he’s healthy, and he won a Super Bowl. He could have trashed the Vikings organization for letting him go with a five-star promo worthy of a main event spot at SummerSlam. But he also represents a past mistake that Minnesota can’t change.
Maybe Murray or McCarthy can live up to that bar. But it’s more likely the ghost of Darnold is impacting the way Vikings fans think, and it’s rearing its ugly head as the quarterback competition heats up during training camp.
