Sam Darnold’s rise starts with the simple things

EAGAN – The Minnesota Vikings season had a pretty clear turning point. Coming off a 12-7 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars in which Sam Darnold threw three interceptions and the offense struggled to finish drives, the Vikings quarterback was either going to continue to be a rollercoaster or he was going to use the Jags game to refocus and return to the things that helped him start 5-0 and draw MVP discussion.

The answer is incredibly clear. Over the past four weeks, Darnold has completed 68% of his passes for an average of 289 yards per carry. game with 11 touchdown passes and zero interceptions. PFF ranks him as the best quarterback in the NFL since the ugly win over Jacksonville, a hair over MVP favorite Josh Allen.

“I think there can be incredible growth in moments where maybe on the outside it seemed to leave Jacksonville like there’s something really wrong,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said. “Sam goes back Monday morning and, based on a lot of things that Josh (McCown), Grant (Udinski) and myself talked to him about, almost self-coaching. ‘If I just have better feet there or I don’t know , why my eyes were there.’ (It) was an incredible growth moment for him to come back the next week and start stacking some things.

In those four explosive performances, Darnold has reeled in breathtaking highlights, including a 52-yard touchdown to Justin Jefferson that could be called his signature moment of the season to date. He leads the league in PFF’s Big-Time Throws statistic and has the most yardage on throws that travel more than 20 yards over the past four weeks.

All these things are signs that a former superior no. 3-talent is coming into his own and making the plays the New York Jets once dreamed of when they drafted him in 2018.

But there’s been a lot more to his recent game than just the “wow” pieces. The Vikings quarterback has done something he talked about many times during training camp and the preseason: Play point guard.

Where the “point guard” part of his game shows up the most has been in two areas: Play-action and the underneath passing game. Both require timing and execution. Both are the driving forces in the passing game. Both are more consistent than 52-yard touchdowns.

Let’s start with the play actions.

Last week against the Atlanta Falcons, the Vikings intercepted a pass and needed an extended drive to put the final dagger in the Falcons and secure their sixth win of the season. With 4:03 left and the ball on Atlanta’s 43-yard line, O’Connell made a tackle for Darnold. He rolled out to his left, looked down the field, then checked back to his below option, tight end Josh Oliver. The Falcons lost Oliver in the flow of the play, and Darnold completed the pass back across his body for a 26-yard gain. The game is over.

Since the Jags game, Darnold has the second-most yards on play-action in the NFL and the highest yards per carry. trial (14.6). He has a 95.7 PFF grade (out of 100), zero turnovers, an 83.3% completion rate, four touchdowns, zero interceptions and a 155.8 rating.

“There’s a lot of kind of geeky stuff that goes into it, but when you see it come to life in a way that makes it easier for Sam (Darnold) to just throw and catch,” O’Connell said.

Of Darnold’s 30 completions since Week 10, six of them have qualified as Big-Time Throws. This means that the other 24 have been, by design, good decisions by the quarterback.

“I think he’s been really good at putting the ball in play, avoiding negatives, checking the ball down and we’ve reaped the benefits of some yards after the catch from him keeping us on schedule and then we’ve got our whole playbook at our disposal,” O’Connell said. “That’s what I think our team has grown into and what I’m trying to grow into is just having more avenues in the game to get the same result .”

Darnold’s skill set meshes well with the play-action game because he has the athleticism to throw with speed on the fly when called upon. Against the Falcons, he hit a routine first-down completion to Justin Jefferson while running full speed to his left. The play required him to turn around and put the ball out in front of Jefferson as he screamed across the field. Darnold made it look routine.

Where the 27-year-old quarterback says the reason the play-pass game has fallen off is his increased comfort in the offense.

“What I talk about all the time is the amount of time we’ve spent in this offense since April, we’ve run very similar concepts, even during the season, that we’ve run since then,” Darnold said. “Just the comfort level I have with those play-action passes to be able to run them in plays very seamlessly and find completions no matter where they are, whether they’re 5 yards down the field or 50 yards down the field. .”

When Darnold executes play-action plays in structure, they are useful in the pass protection game. It’s harder for defenses to get rushes on the quarterback when he’s rolling away or when they have to respect the possibility of a run. Out of 41 play-action dropbacks over the last four weeks, he has been pressured on just 13 of them and sacked three times. The Vikings have needed help wherever they can get it in protection recently because opponents have dialed up the blitz as an answer to Darnold’s deep passing game.

“Most of the time it’s a clean pocket when you’re in a (rollout) unless you have a (defensive end) just screaming up the field,” running back Aaron Jones said. “So he has some time and then he could just pick and choose (where the ball goes).”

Another answer to opponents’ rushes has been Darnold’s improvement in the short passing game.

When throwing between 0-9 yards through the air over the last four weeks, he has an 89.1% completion percentage (2nd), 7.1 yards per carry. attempts, 6 TD 0 INT, an 85.3 PFF grade (2nd) and 136.0 QB rating (1st) .

“I think over these last few games, (Darnold was) getting back to three or four or five in a progression,” O’Connell said. “All those plays are just so massive, even though in the moment it just seems like another first-and-10. ‘Oh, that’s second-and-3, great.'” But when you stack them all up, it’s winning football. That’s why he wins games and leads us to victories.”

One thing O’Connell pointed out this week was Darnold giving him feedback on plays, telling the caller what aspects of the game plan he was comfortable with and which needed the “red pen” to highlight.

“It’s a surgical process leading into it, it makes sure Sam feels total comfort,” O’Connell said. “We haven’t had a lot of plays, but we’ve had a few where the red pens come out and it’s not called because he doesn’t like the play, and we’ve had plenty of them. Every week I hope that are more and more, hey let’s get rid of them, make it easier to call the game.”

Surgical is the perfect way to define Darnold over the past four weeks. The word cloud before that could have included phrases like “up and down” or “a roller coaster”. The key for Darnold is to keep it that way.

And he will have to keep it that way amid non-stop discussion about his future. An underrated part of Darnold’s consistency of late has been the fact that he has become a topic of debate due to his future contract situation.

“Sam really paid attention to all the clichés: Be where your feet are planted, be in the moment. Let’s go 1-0 this week. Let’s worry about this game plan,” offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said. “There has been a lot of praise and he hasn’t let it affect him and when games don’t necessarily go the way we want or the way he wants, he hasn’t let it affect him either. so he’s been consistent in his demeanor and his approach in his work ethic and you know that’s where we want to be, the most important game is always the next one and this week in Chicago.”

Important, indeed. The Vikings need the version of Darnold who continuously executes the scheme-driven concepts like play-actions and underneath passes to lead his team to the finish line. With a Detroit loss, the door is now open for the Vikings to compete for the NFC North crown, and they will only do so with high-level play from their quarterback.

“I think the biggest thing for me is just continuing to make good decisions and when I let the ball rip, let it rip with confidence,” Darnold said. “I think that’s been the biggest thing for me the last couple of weeks and I just want to keep doing that.”