Vikings film review: Why Sam Darnold couldn’t throw a touchdown in Detroit

The Vikings won 14 games often through Sam Darnold’s arm this season.

Yet on the biggest stage so far, Darnold’s arm fell flat during Sunday night’s 31-9 loss to the Lions. Players and coaches say the critiques should begin with their failures in the red zone, where the Vikings had four trips inside Detroit’s 20-yard line and came away with two field goals and two turnovers on downs.

We’ll detail some of the many reasons for those failures below, but the questions at TCO Performance Center in Eagan this week started with Darnold’s mindset in the biggest game of his NFL career to date, which precedes his first playoff game on Monday night against the Rams.

“Mindset and mechanics sometimes can intertwine,” coach Kevin O’Connell said Monday. “Previous plays impacting the next. … Pitches and catches that we’ve done at a pretty high level all season long within our offense, now it’s not showing up. … But specifically, regarding Sam, the kind of year he’s had and the way he’s responded from any moments of adversity, I’m really excited to get to work with him this week. My confidence level that we can get him right back on track is as high as it could be.”

Coordinator Wes Phillips tried to drive home the point that there were many hands involved in the Vikings’ failures to score a single touchdown out of four red-zone trips.

“That’s really the story of the game,” Phillips said. “Eventually you’re going to have to score some points against a team like that. Didn’t execute the way we wanted. We need to make sure the plays we’re calling, everybody’s clear with the intent and everything is set up in a way that can be protected or have answers. And at times guys [making] a play is part of it. … It’s not just one guy, it never is. There were some instances there were we can get help around Sam. There’s plays I know Sam would like to have back.”

Only three teams — the Jets, Browns, and Cowboys — had fewer rushing touchdowns than the Vikings’ nine this season. Those teams will all draft inside the top 12 in April.

The Vikings have long depended on Darnold to throw touchdowns, whether by being among the NFL’s most explosive passing attacks with 50-yard bombs or by precisely finding the opening when they get closer to the goal line. He largely delivered all season. Only three quarterbacks — the Ravens’ Lamar Jackson, the Bengals’ Joe Burrow and the Buccaneers’ Baker Mayfield — threw more touchdowns inside the 20-yard line than Darnold’s 26.

But he needed a run game in Detroit. Yet Darnold handed the ball off only three times on 14 red-zone plays. They gained 3 yards, inspiring little confidence in O’Connell calling more. When asked, O’Connell said a combination of “mentality” and how the Lions defended led Darnold into passing plays out of the options he had at the line.

“We have the option on some of those plays based upon the looks to get another run off or maybe attack the coverage via cans [moving to a second play] at the line of scrimmage,” O’Connell said. “Kind of either mentality and just how it fell, we probably ended up getting some more looks in man coverage to throw the football and they were able to defend us.”

Vikings coaches didn’t duck responsibility for not always putting Darnold in the best spot. There were at least a couple examples of the Vikings deploying crossing routes against zone coverage, including one where they hurried up to the line and didn’t motion or check the coverage they were facing. The Vikings tried moving receiver Justin Jefferson into the backfield, which works if he’s outrunning a man-to-man cover linebacker, but he instead met a zone-dropping outside backer in the flat and had nowhere to go.

There were also plenty of opportunities for Darnold to take advantage of the Lions blitz, like he did during Jefferson’s 31-yard catch and run against a send-the-house pressure. Detroit sent a similar pressure when Darnold overthrew Jefferson in the end zone on third and goal when Lions safety Brian Branch hit his arm. The Vikings didn’t “make them pay,” O’Connell said, for sending so many pass rushers all night.

“A lot of it was you’ve got to make them pay when they’re balancing coverage to Justin with a lot of pressure,” O’Connell said. “You’ve got to find a way to make one of those six, seven, eight opportunities happen to kind of maybe discourage some of that. There are some other things that I can do better to maybe offset some of those things.”

You don’t go 18 of 41 without a lot going wrong, and Darnold was incredibly inaccurate throughout the night. He twice overthrew tight end T.J. Hockenson on third downs, missed Jefferson multiple times in the end zone, and did not make throws that were open to receiver Jordan Addison and others. Darnold was pressured on nearly half of his dropbacks while taking a season-high 10 hits. That heat got to him, O’Connell acknowledged. Darnold entered Sunday night as the NFL’s highest-rated passer against pass rushes of five or more, according to Sports Info Solutions, but sometimes the offensive line or running backs didn’t block well.

“It’s natural for that to happen,” O’Connell said. “There’s been other times and I think specifically over the previous nine games where he handled pressure in a pretty fantastic way and made some huge plays and some clutch moments of some games and was able to create some things off schedule.”

Coaches are focused on Darnold having a solid foundation of footwork, eye progression and all the nuances of quarterback play for when things go awry as they often do in the NFL.

“Where were his feet? Where were his eyes?” Phillips said. “Is he grounded? Is he getting his back foot in the ground [and] is he able to with the rush up front? But have full confidence that Sam’s going to make a couple of those throws that were maybe a little off in that game. He’s made them all year. He’s bounced back when he’s had maybe a rough game. There haven’t been a whole lot of them.”