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          Deep balls key to Sam Darnold's resurrection with Vikings

          • Kevin Seifert, ESPN Staff WriterOct 4, 2024, 10:00 AM
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              Kevin Seifert is a staff writer who covers the Minnesota Vikings and the NFL at ESPN. Kevin has covered the NFL for over 20 years, joining ESPN in 2008. He was previously a beat reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Washington Times. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia. You can follow him via Twitter @SeifertESPN.
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          EAGAN, Minn. -- The NFL is awash this season with concerns about quarterback play and the lockdown that defenses have shown on downfield throwing -- for most teams, anyway.

          In Minnesota, the message to quarterback Sam Darnold has been decidedly different.

          "If I've told him once I've told him 100 times," coach Kevin O'Connell said this week, "'You're as talented of a deep-ball thrower as I've been around, and I want you to take the [opportunities], and I want you to be confident to pull the trigger.'"

          Some of that conviction arises from the Vikings facing defenses that use a two-high safety scheme to limit big downfield plays from star receiver Justin Jefferson. Since the start of the 2022 season, the Vikings have taken more offensive snaps (354) against such looks than all but one team (Dolphins, 429).

          Mostly, however, it stems from O'Connell's genuine respect for Darnold's deep accuracy, a skill the 2018 No. 3 draft pick has honed in recent years, and an asset the Vikings hope to exploit further as the season continues, beginning with Sunday's matchup against the team that draft him, the New York Jets, at London's Tottenham Hotspur Stadium (9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network).

          As Darnold has begun resurrecting his career to emerge as a (very) early MVP candidate (+1300, per ESPN BET), he has attempted 11 passes that have traveled at least 20 yards in the air past the line of scrimmage (T-19th). However, he has connected on seven of them, including perfectly placed strikes to Jefferson that led to 97- and 44-yard receptions, for a league-best completion rate of 63.6%. Overall, Darnold has thrown 10.4% of his passes 20 or more yards past the line of scrimmage (15th).

          Questions about mechanics hounded Darnold earlier in his career, which began with the Jets and later moved to the Carolina Panthers and San Francisco 49ers. O'Connell and the Vikings' coaching staff have taken their stab at adjusting them, mostly by softening his movement in the pocket as he progresses through his reads, but none of their changes have focused specifically on deep throws.

          Darnold has been dropping dimes since the first day of training camp, when he hit Jefferson in stride on a pass 50 yards downfield, and the Vikings soon came to realize he could enhance their offense with similar throws during the regular season.

          The Vikings produced an efficient passing offense in O'Connell's first two seasons with the Vikings, but it didn't necessarily seek to be explosive. With quarterback Kirk Cousins (now with the Atlanta Falcons), and the three backups who played after he ruptured his Achilles tendon last season, the Vikings ranked 27th in the league with 9.4% of their attempts traveling 20 yards or more in the air.

          This season, Darnold's first-ever pass to Jefferson in a game traveled 34 yards against the New York Giants in Week 1. It led Jefferson to outrun double coverage near the sideline and gain an additional 10 yards after the catch.

          The connection came with near-flawless mechanics; Darnold took a three-step drop from shotgun, planted his back foot, took one hitch and let loose with a pass that mixed what Jefferson considered the ideal balance of zip and air underneath it.

          "For the most part I feel like every single ball he throws doesn't have too much pace on it," Jefferson said. "And it's not too slow. So I feel like he puts the right amount of force towards it and allows us to catch a ball that's not too hard, but also we see the ball coming at a good speed.

          "So I feel like he understands from a receiver standpoint, we don't like to try to catch a hard throw every single time. So [he tries] to make it a little easier on us to try to put a little bit more touch on it for us to catch it, grab it and turn our foot."

          It would be wrong, however, to assume Darnold is simply a naturally precise deep thrower. He has spoken several times in recent weeks about his efforts to improve his deep-ball accuracy while in the NFL.

          "I feel like that was kind of something I struggled with early on," he said. "And I'm just going to continue to work on that. Because when you do get those [opportunities], you don't want to miss them."

          Even while acknowledging that "it sounds funny," Darnold has used two points of emphasis to guide that work: keeping his head still and his eyes on the target.

          "When I was a young player," he said, "I would throw and look up at the ball immediately. I think for me, it's about finishing through the target, keeping my eyes on him, and then if I do want to track the ball, which is natural for me, I can do that.

          "But I really want to make sure I finish through my target, especially on those deep balls, to be able to guide the football as much as I can, all the way through the fingertips."

          More than ever, NFL defenses are geared to discourage such throws. But with Jefferson and his fellow receivers stressing those defenses, and Darnold feeding them, the Vikings hope they have the antidote to that trend.