Sam Darnold picked a terrible day to have his worst game wearing purple.
The Minnesota quarterback put up a season-low 166 yards and a 43.9 completion percent with zero touchdowns for the first time since Week 10, as the Vikings got steamrolled in Detroit, 31-9. Darnold and the Vikings were particularly putrid in the red zone, where they committed two turnovers on downs and settled for two chip-shot field goals on four trips.
"You can't go out there and kick field goals in the red zone against a team like (the Lions)," Darnold said, . "Our defense played great and kept us in the game, but we didn't finish when we had the chance."
The inability to finish drives early completely changed the tenor of the contest, giving the Lions offense time to find its groove. Detroit's three consecutive touchdown drives in the late third quarter and early fourth quarter blasted open a one-point contest.
Darnold had been sensational entering Week 18, earning a Pro Bowl nod and helping turn a club that few believed could threaten for a playoff bid heading into the season into an offensive firebrand. However, Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn brought waves of pressure that had Darnold looking like the Jets-version for the first time all season.
"We didn't do a lot of the things that we've consistently done all season long, and this game came down to finishing in the red zone, weighty downs, third downs, pitching and catching," head coach Kevin O'Connell said.
Darnold airmailed throws all night, particularly missing in the red zone. Detroit squeezed the pocket, making the seventh-year quarterback visibly uncomfortable, and sped up his processing.
The Lions blitzed Darnold on over half of his dropbacks in both meetings this season (55.6% in Week 18), generating pressure on 48.9% of his dropbacks overall (his third-highest rate faced this season), per Next Gen Stats. The Lions played more Cover 0 (all-out blitz) than any other defense in a game this season (14 times), allowing just five completions on those dropbacks.
The loss wasn't all on Darnold, as the defense got pulverized by Jahmyr Gibbs down the stretch, and O'Connell made some questionable calls and was slow to adjust to how Glenn was calling the game.
The coach noted that one bad night doesn't undo all the good the Vikings had accomplished coming into Week 18.
"It doesn't change anything about what this team is made up of," O'Connell said. "You can't win nine in a row, and then we lose one, and allow that to change how we operate. But that also doesn't mean you can't improve and have late-season improvement when you have been playing really good football in the month of December -- sometimes you get hit in the mouth a little bit and you've got to respond. I know we've built this thing in a way that we're going to do that."
Instead of a week off, the Vikings head to Los Angeles to face the Rams next Monday night in the Wild Card Round.
"Losing sucks, but it is what it is," Darnold said. "We did a lot of great things this season and now we have an opportunity to go to the playoffs and play another really good team in Los Angeles. That's the story now."
The story of Darnold's career was rewritten in 2024. His first complication came in the initial weekend of 2025. He'll have another shot against the Rams to prove that it was a hiccup, not a larger symptom.
