Matthew Coller: Sam Darnold-like redemption stories are everywhere in NFL history

Darnold's season has surprised the world but he's hardly the first QB that needed time to develop.

Sam Darnold / Image courtesy of the Minnesota Vikings

EAGAN — On December 16, 2010, those who were holding out hope for Alex Smith to become a winning quarterback probably gave up on that idea.

The No. 1 overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft threw 29 passes for 165 yards with one interception and was sacked six times in a 34-7 loss to the middling San Diego Chargers. His team dropped to 5-9 with the defeat.

At that point in his career, Smith had started 49 games and produced a completion percentage under 60%, more interceptions than touchdowns and a QB rating of 71.3. His team had won just 18 of his starts. In 2010, PFF graded him 33rd of 41, just ahead of Jimmy Clausen.

The following season, the 49ers hired Jim Harbaugh and Smith led his team to a 13-3 record, threw just five interceptions the entire season, outdueled Drew Brees in a playoff game with 299 yards and three touchdowns and came within three points of going to the Super Bowl. He was PFF’s 4th best QB that year.

That was Smith’s age-27 season. Following that year, he went on to make three Pro Bowls and lead victories in 80 regular season games out of 117 starts with a 92.9 QB rating.

Any of that sound familiar?

Through Sam Darnold’s first 56 starts, he won just 21 of them and had a 78.3 QB rating. In his age-27 season, he’s gone 14-2 with 35 touchdowns, 12 interceptions and a 106.4 QB rating. He ranks as PFF’s sixth highest graded QB, tied with Patrick Mahomes. On Thursday, he was named to the Pro Bowl.

Throughout the 2024 season, there were plenty of questions about whether Darnold would eventually regress an go back to the “old Sam,” but he has only played better football as the year has gone along. Over the last six weeks, he’s PFF’s third best QB with 18 touchdowns, just two interceptions and a 114.1 rating. He also leads the league in big-time throws in that span with 18, tied with Joe Burrow.

As the Vikings prepare for the biggest game of Darnold’s career and then his first postseason game, the dialogue nationally about his chances to lead the Vikings to a Super Bowl and whether the Vikings will make him their franchise quarterback going forward will only be amplified.

One thing to keep in mind as we head into the final stretch of the best season this franchise has seen since 1998 is that NFL history has Darnold-like stories painted all over it.

A few examples…

— Hall of Famer Steve Young started his career miserably with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, winning only 10 of his first 29 starts with a 78.4 QB rating, 34 touchdowns and 27 interceptions. He didn’t get to start full time for the 49ers until age 30. After that he went 84-30 with 198 TD, 80 INT and a 101.4 rating. Not to mention a Super Bowl title in 1994.

— Jim Kelly and Kurt Warner didn’t begin their Hall of Fame careers until age 28.

— Drew Brees was a .500 quarterback before age 27 and then went 142-86 with 491 touchdowns and a 101.5 rating in New Orleans.

That’s just the all-time greats. There are dozens more Pro Bowl quarterbacks with similar arcs.

— Matt Hasselbeck didn’t have a winning season until age 28 and then went 47-27 over five years with the Seahawks and appeared in a Super Bowl.

— Rich Gannon’s first double-digit winning season came when he was 34 years old. He made a Super Bowl and won MVP.

— Jake Plummer went 30-52 with Arizona, and then at age 29 joined Broncos and finished 39-15 in Denver.

— Through age 28, Baker Mayfield was 31-38 as a starter and had a middling 86.5 rating. This year he has 39 touchdowns and a 107.6 rating.

If we pick apart each one of these situations, they have some things in common with Darnold. The most obvious is coaching. Whether it was Alex Smith getting to work with Harbaugh or Jake Plummer going to play for Mike Shanahan or Matt Hasselbeck playing for Mike Holmgren, each of the outlier QBs that turned around their careers did so under proven coaches.

With 13 and 14-win seasons under his belt in his first three seasons, we can pretty definitively say that Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell belongs in the same type of category as the top QB coaches.

History’s group of surprise quarterbacks also had a lot of weapons to work with. Whether it was Jerry Rice, Tim Brown, Andre Reed, or Mike Evans, nearly every QB who suddenly emerged had players around them that could maximize their talents.

Darnold has a deep, talented bunch of weapons with Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, Jalen Nailor, TJ Hockenson, Aaron Jones and Josh Oliver.

Most of them also had unique physical gifts. Whether it was Brees’s accuracy or Young’s athleticism, or Mayfield’s arm strength, there was something that made each organization continue to give them chances until it worked. The same goes for Darnold, who the Panthers acquired for a second-round pick despite his struggles in New York and then the Vikings spent $10 million to outbid other suitors despite little evidence of previous success. They did so because of Darnold’s raw talent as a former No. 3 overall pick.

Just because there are examples of the success stories doesn’t mean that every QB who had a surprising glow up ended up working out long term. Jeff George went 8-2 for the Vikings in 1999 and only started seven games for the rest of his career. Trent Green had a 13-win season in 2003 and was never able to repeat it. Kerry Collins bounced back from a rough first five years of his career to take the Giants to the Super Bowl, only to be quarterbacking a brutal Raiders team a few years later.

Naturally the question heading into the final game of the season — with the No. 1 seed in the NFC on the line, no less — is whether Darnold can keep rolling into the playoffs and carry on his performance into the future.

History doesn’t always give us that answer because every player and situation is unique. So what else can we can use in order to figure out where Darnold is headed? Can he win the Super Bowl? Can he compete for multiple Super Bowls?

That might begin with letting go of his past failures as relevant data points. The last time Darnold struggled in the NFL was 2021. Since then he has won 18 of 23 starts with a 102.2 QB rating and has thrown 44 touchdowns to just 16 interceptions.

Vikings offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said that impatience regarding the development of a quarterback can cause us to misunderstand what a QB is capable of becoming.

“Quarterback position is the most difficult position with all of the things that it encompasses to play,” Phillips said. “You see guys sit and then be successful. And who knows, Patrick Mahomes might have been unbelievable starting as a rookie, but we don't know that. But I do think that that time behind a veteran like Alex Smith could only have helped his progression as a quarterback.”

Imagine a world where you didn’t know anything about Darnold until just now and this was the only impression that we had of the 27-year-old quarterback. Wouldn’t we think about his 2024 season much differently? Maybe an even better example to use than Mahomes is Packers QB Jordan Love for this mind experiment. How would he have performed without several years sitting behind Aaron Rodgers? How would he have done with a lesser organization and worse coaching?

There is also no rule that progress has to stop at a certain time or age for QBs. It’s an ever-evolving position, which we have seen from Darnold as he has grown in Kevin O’Connell’s offense this year.

“There were some moments through the year where I thought there was some real growth from him, post Jacksonville… ascending in his comfort in the plans every week, his routine of digesting the plans,” O’Connell said.

Another relevant data point for the current moment and future is how well Darnold has dealt with difficult moments. Whether it’s bouncing back from a bad game against the Jaguars or leading a touchdown drive immediately after throwing an interception, he has the type of resilience that we associate with the top QBs.

“You find that the guys that play the position the best most consistently are the guys that can respond in a way where not only are they going to make it about the details of their job and identifying what might have caused a turnover or maybe a missed opportunity, and then they respond and just go right back to the boring details of doing their job on the next play, the next sequence, and he's done it,” O’Connell said. “You can really go game by game…he’s responded all year long in a way where I don't even think twice about the play I'm going to call after a turnover. There's no like, ‘hey, let's make sure he's all right, there's none of that.’ I think our offense probably feels that with some of the plays that I do call in those moments.”

The fact alone that Darnold was able to take the punishment of New York and Carolina and find his way to the top alone says a lot about his mental toughness.

“I definitely feel like I've been able to move on a lot faster later in my career,” Darnold said. “Just being able to understand that…if it already happened like there's nothing you can do to change it, so I just have to go out there and continue to trust my feet my eyes and go through the checklist, take a deep breath and go back out there and let it rip.”

Let it rip, he has. Heading into his pivotal Week 18 matchup with Detroit, Darnold has thrown for over 4,000 yards with 35 touchdowns a 106.4 QB rating. Since 2010, there are only 17 instances of a QB producing a 106 rating with 500 or more passes. Five of them were Aaron Rodgers. The other QBs on the list include Matt Ryan, Peyton Manning, Jared Goff (2024), Drew Brees, Joe Burrow and Baker Mayfield (2024). The only quarterback to produce a rating that high and not either be a Hall of Famer or have continued future success was DeShaun Watson.

Beyond QB rating, Darnold has impressed across the board. He’s third in PFF’s Big-Time Throw metric behind only Josh Allen and Joe Burrow.

There is no more scrutinized statistic in the sport that quarterback wins but it’s hard to ignore the fact that only Darnold, Patrick Mahomes, Jared Goff and Aaron Rodgers have hit the 14 win mark since 2010. Even if we factor for the 17th game and make it 13 wins, that adds Josh Allen, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning.

Of course, the next challenge always presents a new proving ground for Darnold. That next phase begins on Sunday when the Vikings go to Ford Field with the No. 1 seed on the line.

Fair or not, his performance down the stretch will be weighed heavier than any of his previous play that has taken the Vikings to this point.

But when he says he isn’t worried about all that right now, you have no other choice but to believe him considering the way he’s remained focused through all the potential distractions concerning his future.

“You get lost in the routine, just continuously going Sunday to Sunday,” Darnold said, after briefly acknowledging that it has been “an incredible journey this year.”

Indeed. And we’ll find out on Sunday night what history Darnold will write next for himself.