Matthew Coller: Can Sam Darnold be the next Rich Gannon? Gannon thinks so, if...
There are worse things in this world than being known as the quarterback who reinvented himself mid-career and went from journeyman to MVP. That’s how most everyone remembers the career of former Minnesota Vikings quarterback Rich Gannon. In fact, he’s so well known for this that both Matt Rhule in Carolina and Kevin O’Connell in Minnesota called Gannon to talk to him about the secret to Sam Darnold following The Rich Gannon Model.
When Gannon got the call from Rhule back in 2021, the ex-Panthers head coach wanted him to have a chat with Darnold and give him some advice about refocusing his career and taking advantage of a second chance after he floundered in New York.
Gannon asked Rhule: Has anyone had “The Talk” with him?
What talk?
We’ll get to that in a second. First, some background.
Gannon was the Vikings’ starting quarterback between 1990 and 1992 with mixed results. He won more games than he lost as a Viking and in 1993 Minnesota traded him to Washington. Gannon only played four games there before undergoing rotator cuff surgery and missing the entire 1994 season. When he recovered from surgery, Gannon signed with the Kansas City Chiefs.
That’s where he had “The Talk.”
I’ll let him tell the story:
“I go 7-for-8, great decisions, great footwork, great anticipation, great timing and it’s completion, completion, completion. I throw one route to a tight end on a basic route and it hits him right in the hands and it goes up in the air and it’s picked up by the safety,” Gannon said over the phone last week.
“It couldn’t have gone any better with the exception of the tipped ball interception. I walk to the sideline and [Chiefs head coach Marty Schottenheimer] comes up to me. I’m thinking he’s going to say, ‘dude that’s awesome, you were throwing the s— out of the ball.’ He comes up to me with a stern, straight face, not even bulls—ing voice. He says: ‘If you turn the ball over, you won’t play here in Kansas City.’ He didn’t say you won’t start, he said you won’t play. ‘We don’t do that, we don’t tolerate that.’ In my mind, I was like, are you fricking kidding me? But he didn’t give a shit whose fault it was.”
That’s “The Talk.”
Schottenheimer’s Chiefs were prolific when it came to protecting the football. From 1990 to 1997 Marty’s Chiefs never ranked outside the top 10 in giveaways and ranked in the top 2 in the NFL six times. Gannon went 11-8 in Kansas City with 23 touchdowns and just 11 interceptions. His interception rate went from 3.6% to 1.7% from Minnesota to Kansas City and his sack rate improved from 7.5% to 6.4% under Schottenheimer.
“I became a better player at that position,” Gannon said.
After that Gannon got his big chance in Oakland and the rest is history. A 45-29 record, four straight Pro Bowls, an MVP, a Super Bowl appearance and a reputation as a guy who persevered for 11 seasons before becoming an elite quarterback.
So he told Rhule that if Sam Darnold wants to be the next Rich Gannon then he has to learn the lesson that Rich Gannon once did.
“That was my comment to Matt Rhule, I said, ‘if he doesn’t understand and can’t figure out the importance of ball security then he’s never going to survive in this league,’” Gannon said. “I don’t care who he’s playing with, who the play caller is, any of that.”
The Vikings are hoping that who he’s playing with and the play caller does matter. Darnold appears to have a significant upgrade in coaching from his previous stops where he was QB1 and he’s aiming to take advantage of Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, Aaron Jones and TJ Hockenson.
“When you look at Sam’s career, he goes to the Jets and he’s forced to play before he’s ready,” Gannon said. “Not so sure he was exposed to the best coaching available, whether it was position coaches, play callers and those things. He went through a lot of changes there. Unfortunately he probably had some bad habits at USC. He turned the ball over a lot, he turned it over a lot with the Jets. When you do that the results are not going to be good.”
The numbers backup Gannon’s assertion about turnovers. By PFF’s “turnover-worthy plays” metric, Darnold ranked 25th, 23rd, 24th and 25th from 2018 until 2021. He did lower his percentages from hovering around 4.0% of his plays to 2.9% in 2022 when he went 4-2 as a starter for Carolina. That was 15th among QBs with at least 150 pass attempts.
Gannon spent an hour on the phone with Darnold talking ball when he was playing for the Panthers and feels like he has the tools at his disposal to take a big leap forward with the Vikings.
“My overall assessment of Sam Darnold is that he’s an extremely talented player. He’s very athletic, he’s got good feet, he’s got a big-time arm, he can make all the throws,” Gannon said. “He’s a young guy. He’s 26 years old. It’s stupid that he’s been in the league six years and he’s 26 years old.”
When Gannon spoke with O’Connell in April, the two talked about Darnold’s potential and how the Vikings are excited about him. That excitement may have increased after a strong stretch of spring practices from the former Jet draft pick.
But how does he balance his desire to win and keep the Vikings’ starting job in 2024 with JJ McCarthy waiting in the wings and the lesson from “The Talk” about protecting the football? Well, I found out that there’s a lot to that answer.
Gannon said that it starts with understanding every situation. On third-and-long, he learned over the years that his odds of converting were not that high so he took a straightforward approach to those spots.
“I get a play call on third-and-13 I’m going to drop back, I’m going to set my feet and read it out and if it’s there I’m going to pull the trigger and if it’s not, I’m going to check it down or throw it away but I’m not going to have a negative play,” Gannon explained. “I’m not going to take a sack and let them strip the ball away from me and I’m not going to throw it to the other team. I will not do those things.”
Unsurprisingly, the numbers again back up Gannon. Over Darnold’s career he has a 63.1 career rating on second-and-10 or more and 63.0 rating on third-and-10 or longer. To take it a step further, 25 of Darnold’s career interceptions came on second or third down with seven or more yards to go. That’s fifth most in the NFL since 2018 and he’s only thrown 708 passes in long yardage situations. Jared Goff has 24 INTs on second or third-and-7+ with 465 more attempts.
On 505 passes on second or third down with fewer than seven yards to go, Darnold only threw 15 interceptions. That’s still a shade high at 2.9% of passes but much closer to good QBs like Matthew Stafford and Josh Allen in the same scenarios (2.3%). It’s not unreasonable to think that he was trying to do too much when the down-and-distance was daunting.
Gannon said the best way to improve these numbers is by mastering the offense and getting in lockstep with O’Connell. There is nothing better for a quarterback than knowing the answers to the test at the line of scrimmage.
“Understanding situational football, understanding protections inside out,” Gannon said. “Where are we vulnerable? What is the check in this situation? Why is he calling that play in this situation? What are my answers in this situation? When you get to that point in your development then the game really slows down.”
Gannon thinks that Darnold’s time in San Francisco may have helped with this aspect of the game. Both of them had time as a backup and the former MVP said that a quarterback starts seeing defenses and schemes differently when he has a chance to watch. Not to mention that he was able to play under Kyle Shanahan and former NFL QB Brian Griese.
So how would Gannon approach the opportunity in Minnesota if he were in Darnold’s shoes?
“If I get that opportunity and we start the season and we get off to a good start then I ain’t coming out, that’s my mindset,” Gannon said. “They don’t have to play JJ if we’re 7-2 then this is going to be my opportunity. If you’re Sam that’s all you want. An opportunity to show people that I’m a different player and I’ve matured and developed into a quarterback who can be trusted. Reliable, dependable and consistent. Do I go out each week and give my team a chance to win? If there’s three minutes left, do we have a chance to win or did I do some foolish s— at the beginning of the game and turn the ball over and we’re behind?”