Committed: Vikings breaks silence by signing QB Sam Darnold worth $10,000,000 to Record-Breaking Deal

Vikings breaks silence by signing QB Sam Darnold to Record-Breaking Deal

Former New York Jets QB Sam Darnold reacting in the middle of an NFL game.

The New York Jets traded away Sam Darnold during the 2020 offseason. Five years later a prominent voice in the Jets community would like to see the pair reunited in 2025.

ESPN’s Bob Wischusen made a passionate case for it during an appearance on 880AM ESPN New York despite the way Darnold’s season ended for the Minnesota Vikings.

“Oh, I hope it crushes his market to the point that the Jets are the only team that can get their hands on him and then bring him here—1000%. I would get every minion that I could muster if I were the Jets to put every whisper in everyone’s ear going did you see Sam last night? He was terrible, he was awful, you have no chance to win with this guy. Then see if you can get his price down to the low 20 millions and then sign him to a five-year contract after he won 14 games this year and bring him here tomorrow. That would be my take. I would have no problem if Sam Darnold were the Jets quarterback starting next season,” Wischusen said on “Don, Hahn, & Rosenberg.” “I hope nobody wants him after last night’s game and I hope the Jets have a chance to bring him back.”

That current reigning champion for the largest Jets contract belongs to defensive tackle Quinnen Williams. He inked a four-year $96 million contract with an annual value of $24 million per season.

Wischusen’s proposal would be a five-year deal for at least $100 million but likely more. The annual average salary would be at least $20 million per year but again likely higher.

Spotrac’s calculated market value believes Darnold can sign a $160 million contract in free agency. That $40.1 million annual salary would place him No. 12 among the highest-paid quarterbacks in football, per Over The Cap.

The main reason for the large contract disparity between Spotrac and Wischusen’s estimate is how the season ended for the Vikings.

Minnesota averaged 25 points per game through the first 16 games of the 2024 regular season. In other words, it was a top-10 scoring offense for most of the year. However in Week 18 versus the Detroit Lions and in the wildcard playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams, the Vikings scored just nine points in each contest.

Candidly, Darnold struggled in both contests. Across those two games, Darnold was sacked 11 times, only completed 53% of his passes, had just one touchdown to one interception, and threw for 411 total passing yards.

While the finish to the season was as ugly as sin – look at the much larger sample size of the year.

Darnold had a career year by every possible individual metric and his team won 14 games – becoming the first wildcard 14-win team in NFL history to start on the road.

During the season, Darnold completed 66.2% of his passes, threw for 4,319 passing yards, and finished with a 35 touchdown to 12 interception ratio.

If this season had happened with the Jets, Darnold would have reset the Jets record books with the most passing yards and most passing touchdowns by a Jets quarterback in a single season in franchise history.

Darnold is only 27 years of age and he has so much potential beneath the surface.

“It’s amazing to me how many people wait in the weeds with certain players and Sam for whatever reason – I don’t know why – but he is on this list. There are so many people that wait in the weeds for him and some other guys to have a bad moment or a bad game just so they can dunk on him after that one bad moment or that one bad game rather than looking at the circumstances. Obviously he showed this year in the large sample size that the circumstances of the Jets and Panthers situations that he was in were very difficult hands to be dealt. Once you got him good players he is a good quarterback and you can win,” Wischusen explained.

The majority of people blame the Jets for Darnold’s struggles when he was on the team – not him. The criticism is the Jets didn’t put enough protection and playmakers around him the first time around. Fast forward to 2025 and the Jets have a stout offensive line and playmakers (Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall).

Who wouldn’t want to run this back and see if they can change the Darnold-Jets’ destiny? The green and white clearly have issues at the QB position and will seek answers this offseason.

One option they should seriously explore is bringing Darnold back home.

Paul Esden Jr. covers the New York Jets for Heavy.com. A New York native, he co-hosts Cumulus Media’s morning show, “The Manchild Show with Boy Green.” Before joining Heavy in 2021, Esden Jr. covered both national and New York sports for FanSided, Elite Sports NY and The Score 1260. More about Paul Esden Jr