Good news: Kevin O’Connell gives insight into Vikings 2025 QB plans

Heading into the 2024 NFL season, most fans had a pretty good idea of what the Minnesota Vikings were planning to do at the quarterback position.

After investing heavily in the position heading into training camp, most assumed that veteran journeyman Sam Darnold would serve as a stopgap to start off the season, but eventually, JJ McCarthy would take the field and hold the spot into the future.

Maybe McCarthy would win the job outright. Maybe Darnold would hold the job all year, but in the end, the former looked like the team’s quarterback of the not-to-distant future either way.

And then McCarthy suffered a season-ending injury during training camp, and Darnold was effectively afforded a full season to show his stuff as Minnesota kicked the can down the road for one more season.

But then, Darnold blew up, leading the Vikings to 14 regular-season wins and getting MVP chatter for his efforts.

Asked how 2024 will impact the Vikings’ 2025 QB plans on the Dan Patrick Show, head coach Kevin O’Connell broke down Minnesota’s process heading into the spring, even if he wasn’t willing to completely give up the goat before the start of free agency.

We’re evaluating how we’re going to move forward and put the best possible team together in 2025 and beyond. We know we’re excited about JJ McCarthy. He confirmed a lot of the things in a very short amount of time that we had hoped to be from him before unfortunately getting hurt,” O’Connell told Patrick.

Then Sam took advantage of his opportunity and has really put himself as probably the premier player at the position going into free agency. Sam is going to have some opportunities. We’re working through what that’s going to look like for us.”

Interesting stuff, right? Very, very interesting indeed.

Had Darnold played just a little bit better or a little bit worse, the Vikings’ decision would have been much easier to make as they would have known definitively what the USC product’s ceiling and floor looked like in O’Connell’s system.

But after playing like an unquestioned franchise quarterback for most of 2024 only to fall apart in a spectacular fashion in 2025, some have openly wondered if bringing back Darnold makes sense for the Vikings or if they should see how he looks in another system while turning the keys over to McCarthy.

If Darnold can match his performance with, say, the Cleveland Browns, the Vikings will look rather silly, especially if McCarthy looks like a rookie who didn’t throw the ball a ton in college. But if McCarthy plays at the same level or better, Minnesota will unquestionably be better off, as they will have the ultimate NFL cheat code: a franchise quarterback on a rookie-scale contract.

How will things shake out? Only time will tell, but if the Vikings don’t franchise tag Darnold by March 4, it’s safe to assume that he will be playing elsewhere in 2025 with the McCarthy Era coming to Minnesota whether he’s ready to fill the role or not.