SI:AM | The Vikings Are the Total Package

Minnesota’s win over the Jets wasn’t pretty, but it showed why the team is the real deal.

Darnold wasn’t as effective Sunday, but Minnesota still won. / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I wonder how many people reading this stayed up to watch the end of the rain-delayed Sunday Night Football game at 1 a.m.

In today’s SI:AM:

✈️ Jets fall flat again
📈 Jayden Daniels has Washington soaring
🏀 Liberty back in the Finals

They’ve got the goods

Who would have guessed that the first team in the NFL to reach five wins this season would be the Minnesota Vikings?

With a 23–17 win over the New York Jets on Sunday in London, the Vikings improved to 5–0. There’s only one other undefeated team left in the NFL: the Kansas City Chiefs (4–0), who will put their perfect record on the line on Monday Night Football against the New Orleans Saints.

Minnesota’s first four wins were powered by the improbable renaissance of quarterback Sam Darnold, who was pressed into the starting role after rookie first-round pick J.J. McCarthy went down with a season-ending knee injury in training camp. But even though Darnold came back down to earth in Sunday’s matchup against the team that drafted him, the Vikings were able to ride their stout defense to victory.

Darnold was a revelation in the first four games of the season, completing 68.9% of his passes with 11 touchdowns and three interceptions while averaging 233 yards per game. It was stunning to see Darnold, a draft bust playing for his fourth team in five years, suddenly find himself on early-season MVP candidate lists, but the improvement was undeniable. In 2021, his last season as a primary starter, he completed 59.9% of his passes and averaged 210.6 yards per game with nine touchdowns and 13 interceptions. He was 4–7 as a starter.

Darnold looked more like that version of himself on Sunday, completing just 14 of 31 pass attempts (45.2%) for 179 yards. He threw one interception, had no touchdowns and also lost a fumble. Darnold will certainly struggle again at times this season. There’s no reason to believe that he’s suddenly developed into a top-five NFL quarterback who will play mistake-free football every week. But the Vikings’ ability to pick up a win on Sunday when Darnold had a rough outing shows why they’ll be a team worth reckoning with this season.

Darnold’s resurgence has garnered most of the attention, but the Vikings’ defense has been equally noteworthy. They held the Jets to 254 total yards and 3.6 yards per play. Minnesota now ranks fourth in the NFL in points allowed per game with 15.2 but is 16th in yards allowed (330.2 per game). The main reason the defense has been able to stymie its opponents is that it ranks second in the league with 13 takeaways. The Vikings picked off Aaron Rodgers three times in the win over the Jets on Sunday, including a spectacular pick by Stephon Gilmore to seal the game when New York was driving for a potential game-winning score.

STEPHON GILMORE SEALS THE WIN WITH A PICK.#NYJvsMIN pic.twitter.com/3Li9D2uZw1

— NFL (@NFL) October 6, 2024

The defense was a bright spot for the Vikings last season, ranking 13th in points allowed and 16th in yards allowed, but with Kirk Cousins out injured, their offense simply wasn’t good enough to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the defense. The defense looks different this year—most notably with the absence of star pass rusher Danielle Hunter, who signed as a free agent with the Houston Texans—but it has been equally effective. The 34-year-old Gilmore has been a solid addition to the secondary and pass rusher Patrick Jones II has helped offset the loss of Hunter. Jones has five sacks this season after having five sacks combined in the first 32 games of his career.

It’s a long season, and Darnold’s hot four-game stretch may prove to be a fluke. Or Sunday’s struggles might prove to be nothing more than the result of playing a game across the ocean at 8:30 a.m. Minnesota time. In either case, the fact that the Vikings have a strong defense to lean on when the offense stumbles means they’re set up to be contenders this year.

Daniels (5) continues to wow in his rookie season. / Geoff Burke-Imagn Images

The best of Sports Illustrated

• The Jets’ loss to the Vikings was another example of the shortcomings of the team’s offense. Conor Orr argues that it shows why New York needs to execute a trade for disgruntled Raiders receiver Davante Adams.

• Orr also wrote about the Commanders’ blowout win over the Browns and how Jayden Daniels is the type of quarterback Cleveland thought it was getting in Deshaun Watson.

• Daniels isn’t the only rookie quarterback who’s already excelling. Albert Breer led his Week 5 takeaways with the strong play of Caleb Williams.

• After their loss to the Cardinals, Gilberto Manzano is worried about the 49ers.

• Tom Verducci is covering the Mets-Phillies NLDS, which saw Bryce Harper rise to the occasion in Game 2 to even the series.

• The Liberty are back in the WNBA Finals after Sabrina Ionescu’s bounceback performance in Game 4. Emma Baccellieri has more on Ionescu’s big game and New York’s pursuit of its first championship.

• Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers was arrested Saturday on strangulation and cocaine possession charges.

The top five…

… things I saw yesterday:

5. Demarcus Robinson’s leaping catch.
4. Patrick Surtain II’s 100-yard pick six.
3. Isaiah Simmons’s hurdle over the line to block a game-tying field goal attempt.
2. Mark Vientos’s game-tying home run in the ninth. The Mets went on to lose, but it was another clutch play late in the game for this New York team.
1. Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos’s back-to-back homers to take the lead in the sixth.