Sam Darnold’s five TD passes lead Vikings to 42-21 win over Kirk Cousins’ Falcons

Up 42-21 on the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday, the Vikings had pulled most of their starters for Kirk Cousins’ final series in his return to Minnesota. Brian Asamoah II was flagged for offside on a first-and-15 play in which Cousins hit Kyle Pitts for a gain of 6 yards with 2:33 left.

The crowd of 67,008 — the second-largest in U.S. Bank Stadium’s nine seasons — crescendoed for reasons that had nothing to do with the penalty. The stadium’s video operators showed the NFL statistical leaders for the day, with Sam Darnold at the top of the league in passing yards and Jordan Addison and Justin Jefferson running 1-2 in receiving yards.

Cameras cut to shots of Darnold, then Jefferson and Addison, giving all three their curtain calls as coach Kevin O’Connell looked up at the video board and tried to stifle a smile. Jefferson stood on the Vikings’ bench, his head nodding and his grills gleaming with a wide smile, as Darnold turned to the crowd and whipped his towel overhead like Larry Bird in a playoff game.

Cousins handed off to Bijan Robinson on the next play, the clock ticked down toward the two-minute warning, and the revelry turned to “M-V-P” chants for Darnold.

“That was a lot of emotion for me,” said Darnold, who was 22-for-28 for 347 yards in what was a 42-21 Vikings victory that extended their winning streak to six. “I was just excited, man. I feel like I couldn’t just sit there, kind of stoic and straight-faced. I feel like I had to show a little bit of emotion for the fans and give them what they wanted. So that was a special moment for me.”

Who would have predicted it? Would the Vikings, even in their rosiest projections, have envisioned a scenario in which Darnold, the quarterback they had signed to a one-year deal hours after Cousins had left for Atlanta, was the central figure in the most celebratory moment of the season?

“That was one of the coolest end-of-game environments in a stadium I’ve been in,” right tackle Brian O’Neill said. “Looking around, everybody’s having a good time. It was cool.”

Darnold became the first Vikings quarterback with a five-touchdown game since Daunte Culpepper against the New Orleans Saints on Oct. 17, 2004. His 157.9 passer rating was the second-highest in team history, behind only Rich Gannon’s perfect 158.3 score on a day when he threw 10 passes in a 1992 win over the Saints. Darnold signed a one-year deal with the Vikings to reboot his career while the team sought a transitory starter; his 28 touchdown passes are tied with Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield for the third most in the league.

“You guys know I’m good for a little emotional moment every now and again. I’m just proud of him,” O’Connell said. “Days like this are so many hours of hard work and committing to being a Minnesota Viking and making sure that everything I do, every waking moment I have, is built on earning the trust of my teammates, performing at a high level. When you have a result like this, everyone’s going to talk about the result. I hope they do. But for me and Sam and our team, there’s not many guys in the locker room that are surprised about the performance he had today.”

The day, though, wasn’t just about Darnold. Its jubilant peaks couldn’t have been as high if it were.

It was about an organization that held firm in its negotiations with Cousins, its six-year starter, as the hours ticked down toward free agency in March, confident it could chart a path forward even if the passer with whom O’Connell had constructed the offense left. Sources said the Vikings had offered Cousins a substantial multiyear contract, with guaranteed money beyond 2024, but the deal didn’t include the full guarantees for 2025 that had been a must-have for Cousins since negotiations started a year ago.

Atlanta offered Cousins a four-year, $180 million deal that included the guarantees he wanted. The Vikings wished him well, let him leave and signed Darnold before drafting J.J. McCarthy. The quarterback uncertainty was met with tepid projections from oddsmakers (who set the Vikings’ over-under at 7½ wins) and lukewarm predictions from media members.

On Sunday, the Vikings (11-2) became one of four NFL teams with 11 wins.

“Y’all didn’t know what we really had in this building,” said Jefferson, who caught all seven of his targets for 132 yards and two touchdowns. “Y’all didn’t really know how Sam was going to come in and be the leader that he is. And I mean, just the weapons that we have on this offensive side, not to mention the defense and them getting two turnovers, and special teams getting a fumble. So it’s just all three phases really coming together.”

It happened mostly in the second half of a game the Vikings led by only four at halftime. The Falcons took the ball after winning the coin toss, sending Cousins straight into the fury of a crowd that seemed particularly charged. He directed an 11-play, 70-yard drive, completing four of his five passes for 53 yards on a drive Tyler Allgeier punctuated with a furious spike after his 6-yard touchdown run.

The Falcons would outgain the Vikings 257-119 in the first half and hold the ball for 19:02 while running for 80 yards. But the Vikings went into halftime with the lead thanks to two big plays against Mike Hughes, their 2018 first-round pick.

Darnold checked to a play-action pass with Hughes lined up across from Addison in press coverage and the Falcons keeping one safety deep. Zach Harrison pushed Dalton Risner into Darnold, and the quarterback’s deep ball was underthrown. But Addison stopped and adjusted for the ball while Hughes lost it, and Addison strolled into the end zone for a 49-yard score that tied the score 7-7.

The Vikings took a 14-7 lead after Hughes’ 47-yard pass interference penalty against Addison in the second quarter and Darnold hit Jefferson with a pass for his first touchdown since Oct. 20.

With 3:36 left in the third quarter, the lead was down to one. The Vikings faced a third-and-8, and the Falcons’ pass rush, which had already sacked Darnold four times, sent a five-man pressure that sent the quarterback scrambling to his left. Darnold reversed to his right, saw Jefferson waving his hand to signal he was open after a busted coverage and heaved the ball 45 yards in the air without setting his feet, allowing Jefferson to strut into the end zone for a 52-yard score.

How many quarterbacks could make that throw? “Not very many,” O’Connell said, before adding with a smile, “That’s exactly what I told him when I walked off the field. I’m not going to tell you what I told him in regard to my opinion on how many guys make that throw.”

Cousins finished with 344 yards and got Atlanta to 21-21, but the Falcons were down 35-21 in the fourth quarter by the time he was intercepted for the second time. Byron Murphy Jr. snagged Cousins’ pass for Drake London with one hand, and the Vikings went 98 yards to build their three-score margin.

“I would love to be playing with a lot more production, and it’s been disappointing the past four weeks not to have a touchdown pass,” said Cousins, who has thrown eight interceptions since his last TD in a four-game losing streak for the 6-7 Falcons. “I hope we can turn that around.”

He was mostly a bystander to the Vikings’ celebration. Fans sang along to the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside” at the two-minute warning; Nick Mullens knelt out the final snaps after Cousins’ final attempt at a TD pass bounced off Kyle Pitts’ hands on fourth down.

Afterward, O’Connell and Cousins embraced near midfield, each one sharing messages of gratitude for the other.

“I love him as a person,” O’Connell said. “I think he’s a great human being, great father, great husband. He stands for so many great things that I always really valued. I’m proud of the way he’s transitioned down to a new place this year.”

The curtain calls Sunday, though, were for the quarterback who had replaced Cousins and the receivers who were still thriving without him.

O’Connell and General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, the ones who believed they could see it all through, would not get their bows. With the GM sitting in the back of the coach’s news conference, O’Connell passed on an opportunity to take one.

Asked whether the day was a validation of what the Vikings had done, trusting they could move on from their long-term starter and win with a new quarterback, O’Connell smiled and simply said, “No.”

After the day the Vikings had, though, little else needed to be said.

To get exclusive analysis on the Vikings by Ben Goessling in your inbox every Friday, sign up for the free Access Vikings newsletter. Email your Vikings questions to accessvikings@startribune.com.