Darnold greeted by Vikings ‘mayhem’ after key win

Kevin Seifert, ESPN Staff WriterDec 29, 2024, 10:22 PM ET

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MINNEAPOLIS — More than 100 people were waiting in the Minnesota Vikings locker room Sunday evening for one man. Sam Darnold was conducting a pair of on-field interviews after his team’s 27-25 victory over the Green Bay Packers, and no one — owners, coaches, players, front office staff members — wanted to begin the celebration without him.

So they waited for Darnold to speak with Fox Sports reporter Tom Rinaldi. Then they waited a few more minutes while Fox Sports analyst Tom Brady awarded Darnold his “LFG” trophy for the game.

“We felt like we waited for a long time,” coach Kevin O’Connell said.

In the meantime, linebacker Jonathan Greenard launched a plan to commemorate Darnold’s eventual arrival. They mobbed him as he ran through the door, pouring what linebacker Blake Cashman called “a waterfall of water” over him and eventually lifted him onto their shoulders — all to honor a season that has the Vikings headed to their biggest regular-season game in recent memory.

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Darnold smiled throughout his postgame news conference with local reporters, even offering a rare glimpse of his personality by referencing the movie “Talladega Nights.”

“It was mayhem,” Darnold said. “I think I blacked out when [players] grabbed me and lifted me up. I didn’t know what to do with my hands in that situation, Ricky Bobby-style. That was an interesting moment but a fun moment to be embraced by your teammates like that.”

The Vikings are now set for a winner-take-all Week 18 game at the Detroit Lions to determine both the NFC North title and the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. None of it would have been possible without Darnold, who signed a one-year contract in March to serve as a short-term starter until rookie J.J. McCarthy was ready to take over.

McCarthy’s season-ending knee injury left Darnold to start all 16 of the Vikings’ games. He has won 14, breaking the NFL record for most victories by a quarterback in his first season with a team. His season-high 377 passing yards pushed him to the first 4,000-yard season of his career, and his three touchdown passes Sunday gave him 35 for the season, the fourth-most in NFL history for a quarterback in his first season with a team.

“He’s playing quarterback at a very, very high level,” O’Connell said, “and has been for the majority of the season. You can tell by the locker room. You can tell by the way I call plays. I know for us to get to where we want to go, we’ve got to be aggressive, and we’ve got to play football in a way that allows us to have our whole offense at our disposal.”

Indeed, O’Connell once again relied on Darnold to execute his unconventional but now unsurprising approach to finishing close games. As the Packers cut a 17-point deficit to two points in the fourth quarter, O’Connell did not simply rely on his running game to take time off the clock and/or force the Packers to use their timeouts. Instead, in their final two possessions, Darnold threw on six of the Vikings’ seven plays before kneeling down on the final three.

Darnold completed four of those passes for 46 yards, including a 6-yard floater to running back Cam Akers on third-and-2 — which Akers caught inches from the ground — to seal the game.

“When guys are packing the box trying to stop the run, I know that [O’Connell] is going to be aggressive if that’s the case,” Darnold said. “Obviously, there’s been times throughout the course of the season where we have tried to run it. So it’s not always going to be that way. But whenever he does call a pass in that situation, I’m always prepared for it, and I feel like our guys did a really good job of executing that.”

As the locker room cleared out about 30 minutes later, Akers was one of the last players remaining. He was still grinning about what he called an “electric” moment.

“He deserves that,” Akers said. “He’s put in a lot of work to be here, and we’re all behind him — the players and the staff.”

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