Injuries struck the Minnesota Vikings in Week 11 last year. John Parker Romo replaced Will Reichard at kicker, and Jake McQuaide replaced long snapper Andrew DePaola. Still, the kicking unit wasn’t Minnesota’s biggest concern in Jacksonville. Nor was it the cigarette smoke, tailpipe exhaust, or industrial smog.
It was that Romo went four for four in his NFL debut because Sam Darnold threw three picks and no touchdowns against a Jacksonville Jaguars team that had the league’s second-worst defense and finished with four wins.
“We will improve. We will put the ball in the end zone. Sam, everybody in this locker room knows you are the guy that’s going to take us there,” O’Connell told Darnold in his postgame speech. “But this is one of the wins I’ll be most proud of. Because not one time did I feel it, not one flinch. These are the ones you remember.”
Never flinched.#Skol pic.twitter.com/oQAQvvamEB
— Minnesota Vikings (@Vikings) November 10, 2024
It seems unlikely that we’ll remember this game five years from now. You may have already flushed it from your memory. Still, O’Connell was right about one thing.
Darnold started putting the ball in the end zone again, leading the Vikings to the playoffs.
However, there’s an alternate reality in which the Vikings never gave him that chance.
J.J. McCarthy tore his meniscus after showing out in a preseason game against the Las Vegas Raiders. In doing so, he became the first first-round quarterback in the modern draft era (since 1967) to miss his rookie season. Had he been available, the Vikings may have turned to their shiny new quarterback after the Jacksonville game.
Week 11 was the Vikings’ sliding doors moment last year. Had McCarthy been healthy, he may have started in Week 12 against the Tennessee Titans, who finished with three wins. He would have then faced the Chicago Bears (5-12), Arizona Cardinals (8-9), and Atlanta Falcons (8-9) before playing Chicago again in Week 15.
It was the soft spot in Minnesota’s schedule, a perfect onramp for the rookie the Vikings want to handle with clean hands. It was the easy part after they started the year with the San Francisco 49ers, Houston Texans, and at Lambeau against the Green Bay Packers before traveling to London. Week 12 was a perfect time to put McCarthy under center.
“Sliding doors moment” is an idiom people use to describe a pivotal, often seemingly minor event with meaningful ramifications. It refers to the 1998 Gwyneth Paltrow movie Sliding Doors, where her character misses a London train. The movie later rewinds, showing her boarding the train. Then, it plays out each alternate reality to show the butterfly effect of making or missing the tube.
Many Vikings fans would love to peer into the alternate reality where McCarthy doesn’t suffer a season-ending non-contact injury in his first preseason game. Knowing that Darnold signed with the Seattle Seahawks after the season, and McCarthy is Minnesota’s presumptive starter, it would be reassuring to have seen him play last year.
It doesn’t make it feel any better that he probably would have if he hadn’t gotten hurt.
The clock had started ticking on Darnold under Big Ben’s shadow in London. Minnesota’s defense mollywhopped Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets in Week 5. However, Darnold had a pick and no touchdowns at Tottenham Stadium, missing guys deep and finishing with a 45.2% completion percentage.
Darnold’s 50.3 quarterback rating was his second-worst, only to the Jaguars game (48.2). That’s worse than the Week 18 “slobber knocker” that wasn’t in Detroit (55.5), or the playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams in Arizona (55.5).
Ironically, Darnold played well in Week 6 against the Detroit Lions (103.5 quarterback rating) and in Los Angeles during the regular season (128.7). However, those games were a harbinger for the Vikings. Ben Johnson created a blueprint for beating Brian Flores’ defense in Week 7, and they lost Christian Darrisaw for the season four days later.
Darnold’s Vikings tenure ended after a 27-9 loss to the Rams in Glendale. However, he may not have played that game had McCarthy stayed healthy last year. That forgettable Week 11 game in Jacksonville could have been meaningful in an alternate universe.