Film Study: Sam Darnold can do a lot (and tries to do too much)
What did we learn from his best and worst game at the end of the 2022 season?
By Matthew Coller
At the press conference to announce the Minnesota Vikings’ free agent signings, general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah did not want to use the word “bridge” to describe Sam Darnold. That adds up considering the Vikings do not yet have another quarterback on the roster yet that he would be bridging toward.
Instead he is QB1 until the draft, where the Vikings are presumably going to look for their franchise QB. But if that quarterback is not ready to play right away, then the “bridge” element comes into play with Darnold.
What would it look like if Darnold were to start the 2024 season? Well, when we look at some of the tape from the end of the 2022 season when he started for the Carolina Panthers, the answer seems to be that it could be quite the experience. Would he be able to take the Vikings to the playoffs? Let’s have a look….
The two games studied here are Darnold’s victory over the Detroit Lions on December 24, 2022 where e completed 15 of 22 passes for 250 yards and scored two touchdowns and a 10-7 victory over the Saints in which he went 5-for-15 with 43 yards and two picks.
We begin with Darnold’s arm talent. He wasn’t taken at the top of the 2018 draft by the New York Jets for no reason. His ability to make off-platform throws with only his arm is nothing short of wowing at times.
On these two plays that happened on the same drive, the Lions push the pocket back into his lap. Both times he flings the ball with no drive from his legs and he’s able to fire a back-shoulder throw near DJ Moore that gets broken up by the cornerback and then finds Moore going full speed toward the sideline for a completion.
It isn’t just highlight plays that show off Darnold’s arm. Sometimes it’s the simple stuff too. The Panthers often used run-pass option plays with the ex-Jet, asking him to fake a run from the shotgun and then get the ball out quickly to his receiver. On this play the ball jumps off of his arm. After faking the handoff, he pulls the ball back up and throws a dart in stride to his receiver for a first down with flawless execution.
But these throws weren’t always effective. When he was throwing the ball between 1-10 yards through the air, Darnold graded just a 59.3 by PFF and only completed 67%, which is low in comparison to top quarterbacks. The ball doesn’t always come out with laser-like precision. It’s hard to say for sure on the play below if there was a miscommunication but it appears that the fastball is just inaccurate because he threw it while fading away as he was trying to put all his velocity behind the ball.
There are a number of those types of quick throws that fall to the ground on routine plays.
In these two games we saw the ying and yang of Darnold though. On passes over 10 yards in 2022 Darnold went 27 for 43 — a very impressive rate while pushing the ball downfield. And you’ll see it on the next two throws in this clip. One of them is a sideline ball that hits his receiver in his outstretched hands just past the defender about 40 yards away and the other is a deep ball that travels about 50 yards in the air and hits Moore on the money without a perfect pocket.
Those are the types of throws you trade up to get. More on that in a moment…
Darnold isn’t known as a runner but the Panthers’ offensive line was abysmal and he did a lot of scrambling. The first play below was quickly blown up at the line of scrimmage and he was strong enough to shake off the defensive lineman and rip off a big gain. The second play shows the problem with having a scramble mentality because Darnold tried too hard to extend the play and nearly put himself in harm’s way.
There is a little bit of Case Keenum — maybe a lot — in Darnold’s game.
Speaking of which, Darnold has a career interception rate (3.1%) that you would expect in the 1990s. It’s comparable to old school gun slingers like Elway and Favre but significantly worse than today’s biggest risk takers like Matthew Stafford (2.4%) and Joe Flacco (2.4%).
Against New Orleans Darnold had two inexcusable picks. The first comes with the Panthers in field goal position. He appears to either misread the coverage or misunderstand how much ground the safety was able to cover in order to reach the middle of the field. Darnold seems to think he has man-to-man coverage on a deep post and never sees the safety, who started on the opposite side of the field, undercut the route and pick the pass off.
His second interception is the downside of Darnold making off-platform throws like they are going out of style. With his team in the lead he feels pressure off the right side, leans on his back foot and flings the ball like it’s a Hail Mary on the final play of the game. It floats up in the air and comes down in the hands of the Saints defender for a totally senseless interception.
Overall Darnold performance at the end of 2022 was by far the best of his career. He won four of six games with a team short on talent, averaged 8.2 yards per attempt, had by far his highest QB rating (92.6), QBR (51.4) and Success Rate (44.0).
There were signs that he could operate an offense effectively and create difference-making plays. Were he able to put together a 17-game stretch of similar performances the Vikings might be able to make the playoffs but it would not be a smooth ride along the way. It would likely be a season of spectacular plays and wild plays that you’d expect from someone who doesn’t have a long NFL career. If he could control the ratio of the bad plays just a little bit better, however, then he could be a winning starter.
ADDITIONAL NOTES
The Vikings are now in the process of filling out their roster, signing two veteran linebackers on Wednesday: Kamu Grugier-Hill and Jihad Ward.
Grugier-Hill has been in the NFL since 2016 mostly as a special teamer and situational cover linebacker. He’s only surpassed 500 snaps once in his career (2021 with Houston) and played 403 plays for Carolina last year, picking up one sack and allowing just 80 yards into his coverage. The PFF grading system has not been kind to Grugier-Hill, scoring him under-50 (out of 100) in each of the last three seasons.
Ward also hasn’t gotten much love from PFF. The 287-pound pass rusher who had 5.0 sacks for the Giants last season ranked 118th out of 122 rushers in overall grade. The journeyman rusher will turn 30 before the season starts.