Matthew Coller: Vikings survive a dip in the Darnold roller coaster

The QB threw three interceptions but the Vikings are 7-2. This is what everyone signed up for with Sam Darnold.

Minnesota Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold (14) is pressured by Jacksonville Jaguars defensive end Travon Walker (44) during the fourth quarter of an NFL football matchup Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024 at Everbank Stadium in Jacksonville, Fla. The Vikings defeated the Jaguars 12-7. [Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union] / Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

JACKSONVILLE — Allow for the cliche: You are what your record says you are. The Minnesota Vikings are a 7-2 team sitting in the driver’s seat in the race to the top of the NFC with a number of games ahead on their schedule that are very winnable. Escaping Jacksonville with a win, regardless of how they got there, keeps them on track in the battle for playoff position. They don’t owe anyone any apologies for that.

Now allow for some facts: Despite the final score, the Vikings completely outplayed the Jaguars. They nearly tripled their yardage and held onto the ball for the entire afternoon. The sputtering Jags defense couldn’t slow the Vikings on the ground or through the air and they couldn’t make almost any progress at all versus Brian Flores’s defense.

If you didn’t catch the final score and you only saw the rest of the box score, you’d guess that the Vikings won by 27 points.

But the fact that Sam Darnold threw three interceptions inside the 25 yard line, ending three excellent drives, left everyone exiting Jacksonville feeling a bitter taste in their mouths.

You can say over and over that getting the W was the only thing that mattered but something else started to set in: The possibility that a tremendously good team could be underdone by the carelessness of its quarterback.

We have gone past the point where we say, “hey, you would take 7-2 based on preseason expectations.” We are wiser now. We understand that Flores’s defense is capable of suffocating teams, particularly when they get proper rest and aren’t playing the Lions. We understand that TJ Hockenson’s addition mid season was like making the trade to get him in 2022 all over again. He single handedly creates an underneath threat that wasn’t there before. We understand how good Aaron Jones is, age curve be darned. We understand that the routes that are drawn up by O’Connell have been befuddling defenses all year.

Heck, with Cam Robinson in the mix they retained a good enough offensive line to get the job done in back to back weeks.

The Vikings aren’t a perfect team but we are talking about a group that can go 52 players for 52 players with 90% of the league or more.

Player No. 1, however, can’t throw the ball to the other team three times if they are going to keep pace in the NFC. Period. The Vikings will not survive having letdown games or getting beaten by teams like the Cardinals, Falcons, Packers or Lions if the quarterback gives the ball away like that.

Roller coasters are thrilling at theme parks and maddening in the NFL. Darnold is a human roller coaster. There doesn’t seem to be an answer for him to stop being that way. No matter how many times the downswing happens and they look for answers and explanations, it seems to happen again. Last week against the Colts he tried to force the ball into a crazy tight window and got picked. Three times on Sunday against the Jags he put the ball where it shouldn’t have been in similar fashion.

If Darnold was a relatively safe QB before and just now turned into an INT machine then we might say he was a victim of bad luck lately. But his history includes season after season of bottom five rankings in turnover-worthy plays.

There was a lot of social media buzz pointing the finger at O’Connell. Of course, that’s an overreaction to the frustrations and keeping the Jaguars in the game. The offense gained 28 first downs and ran 82 plays at 4.9 yards per play. But asking O’Connell to better save Darnold from himself is reasonable. Aggressive doesn’t have to mean aggressive all the time (ahem, a third-and-1 pass?). Screen passes can feel free to return any time they want. Double reverses only work in high school. Red zone running touchdowns are actually legal, feel free to use them.

But O’Connell’s bet on Darnold in the big picture is the only one he can make. Leaning into Darnold through hell or high water is the the only path with upside. You’d have to be sniffing glue to think that another QB is going to give them a better chance. Would you have preferred Jacoby Brissett? This roller coaster has upswings.

O’Connell won the Super Bowl with a quarterback who had INT and sack issues for his entire career because that QB had an upswing at the right time (and a guy on the 49ers dropped a pick). Matthew Stafford led the NFL in INTs in 2021, and had a three game losing streak that year where it looked like KOC himself could jumped on the field and played better. They got through it when Stafford swung up again. If you don’t have a mega star consistent QB, the next best thing is a rocket arm who does unexplainable stuff sometimes.

The unexplainable stuff hurts your brain though. How can he be so good and then gun the ball into nowhere and have it picked? Just check down and keep moving. Of course, the upside to the last guy who had a tendency to check down pretty limited too.

This is the Sam Darnold world we live in. There’s two ways it can work: If he gets hot again or if they win the games where he’s making huge miscues by grinding on defense and running the ball effectively. They did that on Sunday.

This is also life in the NFL. There were terrible losses around the NFL on Sunday. Jared Goff had five picks. The Falcons flopped. The Bears had their fans chanting for the coach to be fired. The Vikings surviving a stumble of this magnitude probably speaks to the strength of the team more than it shines a light on the weaknesses.

For now, the Vikings can boast that they can win ugly. Hey, the Chiefs are doing it right? If they start to come apart as the season goes along and they don’t pull out games against inferior opponents, they will have let one of their best starts of the last 20 years slip away.

Let’s not call it 2022, though. Statistically blasting the opponent wasn’t something they did that year. Winning with defense wasn’t something they did that year. Aaron Jones wasn’t somebody they had that year.

We have reached the point in the season where we have all of the answers and things are going to play out, one way or the other. There’s no trade deadline to fix anything and the adjustments have been made (and worked) on both sides of the ball. It’s in the hands of the roller coaster QB now and that’s a pretty helpless feeling sometimes.