Paul Allen Has Thoughts on Vikings QB1 Decision
The Minnesota Vikings have approximately three choices at quarterback in 2025.
Paul Allen Has Thoughts on Vikings QB1 Decision
The purple team can roll with Sam Darnold, extending his contract this offseason and preventing him from testing free agency. It can also explore a franchise tag-and-trade with Darnold, hoping to snatch a draft pick for his services while limiting his personal options and say in the matter. Or the Vikings can let Darnold leave in free agency and roll with J.J. McCarthy for the future.
According to Paul Allen, the Voice of the Vikings for KFAN, Minnesota might be best served to toss the QB1 emblem on McCarthy next season rather than re-upping with Darnold.
“Fortify the village in a way that everybody amplifies and compliments each other,” Allen told KELO in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, this week. “Do you want to pay him (Sam Darnold) that here, and does that prohibit your options to fortify the village? And you have J.J. McCarthy in the wings. I don’t know where he’s going to play. If he plays here, I’m going to call his games and support him, but if he doesn’t play here, let the J.J. McCarthy era begin.”
Darnold delivered 36 total touchdowns and 4,319 passing yards in 2024 en route to a fabulous 14-3 record after rookie passer J.J. McCarthy exited stage left in August with a torn meniscus. On the season’s grandest stage, though, Darnold personally collapsed — twice — making the case for a sequel in the Twin Cities all the more dicey.
Allen also mentioned Darnold’s disappearing act: “He was so good for the team during the season, then the lights got to be the brightest, and it didn’t just fall apart, the trap door opened, it was done, and nobody could find it. You have to analyze how bad was that and is it going to happen again.”
If the Vikings re-upped with Darnold, they’d merely hope his late-season capitulation wouldn’t happen again next year. It would be a high-stakes bet.
“The Vikings are very close to blowing this whole thing open positively. You don’t win 14 games unless you’re worth your salt in gridiron excellence,” Allen added about the team’s overall trajectory.
McCarthy, meanwhile, has one request this offseason, speaking with Rich Eisen last week: he just wants his chance to lead the franchise.
“There’s a lot of things that are certainly above my pay grade and some things above his pay grade,” McCarthy replied when asked about his teammate Sam Darnold’s impending free agency.
McCarthy told Eisen, “All I could ask for is a fair opportunity. That’s the one thing I feel like everybody’s given and it’s fundamental. When money gets involved, things get complicated and reps get skewed and there’s different things that come into the whole political world that everyone talks about. I really just have to focus on controlling what I can control.”
In all likelihood, Minnesota will hand the QB1 baton to McCarthy while letting Darnold play for another team in 2025. Otherwise, per team-building and allotting assets from the salary cap, general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah would be right back in the Kirk Cousins era, hoping to construct a roster with bargain-bin newcomers because of a pricy QB1 contract.
NFL free agency is 26 days away.
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Dustin Baker is a political scientist who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2007. Subscribe to his daily YouTube Channel, VikesNow. The show features guests, analysis, and opinion on all things related to the purple team, with 4-7 episodes per week. His Vikings obsession dates back to 1996. Listed guilty pleasures: Peanut Butter Ice Cream, ‘The Sopranos,’ Basset Hounds, and The Doors (the band). He follows the NBA as closely as the NFL.
All statistics provided by Pro Football Reference / Stathead; all contractual information provided by OverTheCap.com.
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