ESPN Predicts the Trade Route for Vikings QB
The Minnesota Vikings have a choice, a rather impactful one due by mid-March.
Vikings Trades: ESPN Believes Vikings QB Could Be Dealt
The purple team can re-sign veteran quarterback Sam Darnold for megabucks and let J.J. McCarthy watch and learn for another season. It can apply the franchise tag and trade Darnold to a new team. Or the Vikings can let Darnold walk via free agency and let McCarthy start in 2025.
Those are the stakes, and some outfits, like ESPN, believe McCarthy as a trade chip is a real possibility. If one polled Vikings fans, most would probably roll with McCarthy as the QB1 of the future — that was the plan, after all — but ESPN’s Benjamin Solak isn’t convinced.
“Big prediction for the offseason: I really, truly believe the Vikings will extend Darnold. They have the room for something in the Daniel Jones neighborhood — four years, $160 million is probably optimal, if they can get Darnold to sign that before another team in the free market offers him a whale of a deal,” Solak wrote last weekend.
In theory, Minnesota would probably fetch a Top 5 or 10 pick in this April’s draft for McCarthy. Thereafter, in Solak’s prediction, the Vikings would just start Darnold indefinitely, and that’d be that.
Solak added the McCarthy trade nugget, “Depending on the size of the contract, they’ll either keep McCarthy or quietly look to trade him ahead of a bad quarterback draft class and see if a needy team takes the bait.”
Darnold played wonderfully in 2024 for about 16 games. The man delivered 36 total touchdowns to 12 interceptions, along with 4,319 passing yards. Darnold, on the whole, did not struggle during his first year with the Vikings.
However, with the lights brightest, Darnold utterly crumbled in the season’s final two games, with trips to the Divisional Round of the playoffs on the line. He threw the ball off-target, above pass-catchers’ heads, and perhaps his most fatal flaw — holding the rock too long in the pocket.
Since the end of Tommy Kramer 35 years ago, aside from a 5.5-year ride with Daunte Culpepper in the early 2000s, Minnesota has too often settled on a journeyman backup to serve as the QB1 solution. Few exceptions exist, outside of Christian Ponder and Teddy Bridgewater, who didn’t pan out.
Because of constant, seemingly neverending re-tread quarterback solutions for Minnesota, fans would be rather upset if Solak were correct and the Vikings traded McCarthy.
It would also be extremely strange to invest in Darnold over McCarthy for the long haul after Darnold just showed his true colors in two high-stakes football games.
But Solak still sees a path for Darnold to return while possibly offloading McCarthy. What a world.
Yes, the Vikings Have THAT Blueprint.
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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