Minnesota was starting to believe that Darnold could exorcise the franchise’s playoff demons. Then he had his own terrifying blast from the past.
Late Sunday night, in the center of a postgame Ford Field, Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell embraced Minnesota Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell and offered a simple message.
“See you in two weeks,” Campbell said.
The Lions had just beaten the Vikings 31-9 to grab the NFC North title and the No. 1 overall seed in the NFC playoffs. If the teams meet again in two weeks, it’ll be right in the same place, a deafening building in downtown Detroit.
Campbell’s team was headed into a much-needed bye week; to the victors go the rest and recovery.
Meanwhile, O’Connell’s club was spinning in another direction, and not just off to Los Angeles as the fifth-seed to face the Los Angeles Rams next Monday night in the wild-card round. Suddenly this was a 14-3 team with doubts and demons rising up. It was the byproduct of a dreadful night of quarterback play by Sam Darnold and a franchise history that is tortured enough to know a problem when it sees it.
This will be Minnesota’s 24th playoff appearance since 1976 when Fran Tarkenton and the Purple People Eaters lost for a fourth time in the Super Bowl. The Vikings haven’t been back to the big game since.
They’ve bowed out in every imaginable way — as favorites, as upstarts, as divisional champs and as a 15-1 team. They’ve lost with talents such as Randy Moss, Adrian Peterson and Brett Favre. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.
They are part of a city that has four major professional men’s sports franchises but not a single title since the Twins won the World Series in 1991.
Much is (rightfully) made of long-suffering Lions fans, but at least many of them could crossover and enjoy the success of the Red Wings’ or Pistons’ title runs this century. Not so in the Twin Cities.
That likely contributed to the panic that crept though Vikings fans on Sunday, when Darnold, the out-of-nowhere quarterback star/savior of the season began looking like his old New York Jets ghost-seeing days.
Detroit’s injury-riddled defense had been mostly a sieve of late, surrendering 31 to Green Bay, 34 to San Francisco and 48 to Buffalo. Yet Minnesota managed just 9, got stopped from scoring a touchdown in four red zone trips and gained just 262 yards.
Yes, the Lions got back linebacker Alex Anzalone to help in the middle of the field and defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn dialed up a genius game plan. Credit to them.
But this was also on Darnold — who threw high, who threw late, who threw it out of bounds. He had Justin Jefferson open multiple times for scores only to toss it where the guy who can catch anything couldn’t catch it. He had Jordan Addison open another time and didn’t pass it.
“Just got to hit the throws, it’s as simple as that,” Darnold said afterward.
He finished just 18-of-41 for a season-low 166 yards. Darnold entered the game completing 67.7 percent of his passes, to hit just 43.9 against the Lions. He promised to go back to the fundamentals to improve his accuracy.
“I think for me, personally, I’ve got to look at the tape, see just my feet and just correct everything from a mechanics standpoint — not look too deep into it, but just get better,” Darnold explained.
It’s great that he owned the loss, but who wants a QB searching for proper footwork heading into the playoffs? In a calm world, everyone would exhale and remember this team won 14 games this season. This is the NFL, though, overreaction is a way of life and Vikings fans have been burned too many times to ignore what they saw.
If Darnold is playing like that, this may not last long. Getting back to Detroit in two weeks — perhaps once considered a formality — is not guaranteed.
“Early on in the game, it seemed the misses were a little high, so we’ve got to take a look at it, fundamentals, techniques, and take a look at the plays that things happened on,” O’Connell said. “Having the Monday night game, we’ll be able to do — we’ll be able to have a real full kind of debrief and understanding of what took place because clearly it starts with me …
“Sam has hit a lot of those plays all year and I have every bit of confidence that he will hit it the next time,” O’Connell continued.
O’Connell’s stated confidence may be rewarded. Maybe the Sam Darnold that was among the NFL’s best stories this season returns to that form. Or maybe this is the inevitable regression to the mean for a 27-year-old on his fourth team.
Only Darnold can determine that, but across 60 minutes on Sunday night in Detroit, the Vikings went from dreaming of everything to shaking off the nightmares of seasons’ past.
All while wondering which Sam Darnold will show up in the playoffs.
