The Minnesota Vikings are going to have an interesting season in 2024. It was initially supposed to be the year of J.J. McCarthy but he is lost for an undetermined amount of time due to a knee injury. 

Things had looked promising for the rookie signal caller who was one of the best players on the field against the Las Vegas Raiders during the first preseason game on Saturday. He went 11-of-17 for 188 yards, two touchdowns and an interception with nearly all of his production coming after the pick.

McCarthy getting the starting job at some point in 2024 was always based on clearing certain benchmarks. Until he did that, the job was Sam Darnold's.

Path is clear for Sam Darnold's breakout season

Darnold is going into his seventh season in the National Football League on his fourth team. That's not a recipe for success. However, it doesn't mean that he's a hopeless case.

The third overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft, Darnold had an immense level of arm talent without a lot of experience or polish. Teams that were interested knew that he would be a project with a sky-high ceiling. Unfortunately, he was stuck on the New York Jets and they did him zero favors. Same with the Carolina Panthers who traded for him after his third season.

---

His one year in San Francisco showed a player who had learned a lot of tough lessons and someone who has grown significantly over the course of his time in the NFL. That is one reason why the Vikings signed him to a one-year, $10 million contract to be their de facto bridge quarterback for McCarthy.

The question always was: could the Vikings harness the talent that Darnold has? It's been something that could come to fruition very quickly, as Darnold is a supremely talented player entering one of the best quarterback infrastructures in the league.

---

One of the biggest things with Darnold has been his accuracy. He's struggled with it and told the media as such on August third.

"I feel like early on in my career, the previous few years, haven't been as accurate as I wanted to be. So it's kind of been a point of emphasis for me in the off-season, just to get better at that and so, yeah, it's good to be able to make progress that way. But again, you just gotta, you gotta continue to stack days you can't, you can't be satisfied with, you know, you know, having a good throw one day, because, you know, for one play and the next play, you know, you know, can just catch up to really fast in this league. And so you just got to continue to work and stack Good, good plays on top of, on top of plays."

---

One of the other big elements for Darnold is the prospect of not having someone look over his shoulder. Right away in his second season with the Panthers, they had just traded for Baker Mayfield, who was selected one spot ahead of him in the 2018 NFL Draft. That can factor in to a quarterback's psyche because you are potentially just one play away from being replaced.

With McCarthy potentially being sidelined for a year, that could make things a lot easier for Darnold where he can just focus on playing quarterback and not worry about outside noise. It can help him play more relaxed and confident.

---

It also helps that the head coach believes in Darnold. He didn't say much about his preseason debut, but the words he did say were complementary.

"I thought Sam [Darnold] did a great job starting the game," said O'Connell. "Really efficient drive down the field. Tried to give him a shot there on fourth down, bang bang play to speedy (Jalen Nailor)."

What if Sam Darnold is really good?

This is the other element of Darnold potentially being the starter for the entire season. What happens if he's just really good and it puts the Vikings in a conundrum? I broke that down on a past episode of The Real Forno Show.

"I want to relate it to a scenario that happened with the Chargers 2001 NFL draft. They had the first overall pick and hey weren't 100% sold on Michael Vick. Now, in today's day and age, I think everybody would have been sold on Michael Vick the player, but 2001 it was a very, very different league so they traded back to fifth overall and they got a decent package and then they took LaDanian Tomlinson and with the first pick in the second round, they took Drew Brees. And Brees we know and he's going to end up being in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but at that point, Brees his first couple years he was okay and very up and down. And in the 2004 NFL Draft, they had the first overall pick again they took Eli Manning, traded for Philip Rivers, got extra draft capital from the Giants and the rest is history. So 2004 Drew Brees is in a contract year, balls out and I believe he made the Pro Bowl so now the Chargers are looking at themselves okay. We've got essentially the first overall pick here because that's the pick they had Rivers was taken for do we go with Rivers or do we keep Drew Brees after he just absolutely balled out and he looks to be like a legitimate quarterback. What do we do? And I think that scenario is something that you can kind of look at for a comparison point if darnold just all of the sudden takes off because he just turned 27 years old."

That's a problem that every Vikings fan would welcome because it means the team ended up having a really good 2024 season. He has all the good to make that situation a reality. 

When you have a talent like Darnold does, at some point it's going to come out and manifest itself. It did so for Geno Smith in 2022 and Baker Mayfield had a renaissance in 2023. Why not Darnold in 2024?