He’d re-up with Sam Darnold.
Cris Carter Has Bold Take on Vikings QB1 Choice
That’s the word from Hall of Famer Cris Carter on the Minnesota Vikings’ impending decision at quarterback this offseason. The club will soon decide to re-sign Darnold, franchise tag-and-trade him, or let him hit free agency in 18 days.
If the decision landed on Carter’s doorstep, he’d retain Darnold, who is fresh off a career-reclaiming season in 2024. “When you have quarterbacks that play well in your system like Sam Darnold did, I would not let him go in free agency. I would franchise him, and then let him and J.J. have a competition come the fall,” Carter told Kay Adams on The Up and Adams Show this week.
The J.J., mentioned by Carter, is J.J. McCarthy, the Vikings’ quarterback of the future, drafted from Round 1 about 10 months ago. Oddsmakers and most Vikings fans believe McCarthy, not Darnold, will lead Minnesota at QB1 in 2025.
Re-signing Darnold would be fine and dandy for Minnesota — per Carter’s recommendation — if his market value hadn’t climbed so much in the last year. Darnold accumulated 36 total touchdowns, 12 interceptions, and 4,319 passing yards as a Viking in 2024, statistics that shot his next contract’s value to the moon.
Theoretically, if Minnesota listened to Carter and inked Darnold for $40 million per year, the organization would zap its free-agent budget and retreat to the Kirk Cousins era of team-building, hoping to find mid-tier and bargain-bin contributors on the open market.
As it stands on February 20th, Minnesota has over $60 million in cap space to spend big in free agency. Bringing Darnold back would substantially sink that number unless general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah backloaded Darnold’s extension.
Shortly before the Super Bowl, Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell essentially told the world of his franchise’s plans. “To be sitting here today, Sam Darnold, 14 wins later, his best season of his career by far. He deserves all the credit for that. We had belief in him and he earned it with his teammates on a daily basis. But then also to have J.J. McCarthy now healthy, gonna have a full offseason, I think it’s going to be really exciting. We’ll see how the free agency process works out for Sam,” O’Connell said on February 7th.
O’Connell appeared to tip his team’s hand and state that Darnold would hit free agency.
But if Carter got his way, Darnold would be back on the franchise tag, earning $41 million in 2025.
Free agency kicks off on March 10th with “legal tampering.”
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.