At the NFL scouting combine last year, former general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah made it sound like the Minnesota Vikings were considering keeping Sam Darnold.

“Every option is afforded to us,” Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said. “When we [signed Darnold] originally, we wanted to create optionality.”

However, Kevin O’Connell appeared to tip Minnesota’s hand at the combine.

“There was an organizational plan in place where we wanted to have a guy that we thought we could win football games with while still attempting to draft our quarterback of the future,” O’Connell told ESPN radio.

“To be sitting here today, Sam Darnold, 14 wins later, his best season of his career by far. He deserves all the credit for that. We had belief in him, and he earned it with his teammates on a daily basis. But then also to have J.J. McCarthy now healthy, gonna have a full offseason, I think it’s going to be really exciting. We’ll see how the free agency process works out for Sam.”

Did @KevOC7 reveal the @Vikings plans at QB with us the Friday before the Super Bowl on Media Row? 🧐

“We’ll see how the free agency process works out for Sam.” (From 2/7/25) pic.twitter.com/I75KTANPtG

— ESPN Radio (@ESPNRadio) February 18, 2025

It’s easy to watch Sam Darnold win the Super Bowl with the Seattle Seahawks this year and conclude that it cost Kwesi Adofo-Mensah his job. Darnold has become the Vikings’ David Ortiz, whom the Minnesota Twins released in 2002 and became a Hall of Fame player with the Boston Red Sox.

Darnold likely will not reach the heights Ortiz did. Still, the Vikings have been seeking a franchise quarterback since 1978, and they allowed a Super Bowl-winning quarterback to sign with another team the year after he threw for 4,319 yards, 35 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions. Meanwhile, J.J. McCarthy threw for 1,632 yards, 11 touchdowns, and 12 interceptions, and Minnesota hasn’t committed to him as its starter next year.

However, letting Darnold walk is only part of the reason the Vikings moved on from Adofo-Mensah. They spent a league-high $350 million on their roster and were 4-8 and out of the playoffs by December. They also received only 172 starts from players they drafted between 2022 and 2025, the second-fewest in the league.

There are only 11 teams that haven’t drafted a Pro Bowler in that period. The average NFL team received 368 starts from its draft picks during that timeframe.

In his NFL combine interview with ESPN radio, O’Connell indicated that the Vikings intended to move on from Darnold because McCarthy, whom they had selected 10th-overall in 2024, was healthy. Minnesota saw McCarthy as its franchise quarterback, while Darnold was the bridge.

Therefore, it made little sense to franchise-tag Darnold. The intent of the tag is to give teams more time to work out a long-term contract with a star player – think Tee Higgins and the Cincinnati Bengals.

If the Vikings tagged Darnold, they would lock him in for a one-year, $40 million deal. That means other teams may not offer Minnesota the return they seek because they intend to sign him to a deal with less guaranteed money. Ultimately, if Minnesota didn’t intend to sign Darnold long-term, it made little sense to tag him.

Seattle signed Darnold to a three-year, $100.5 million deal, with $37.5 million guaranteed at signing and $55 million in total guarantees. Because the Seahawks signed him as an unrestricted free agent, they could structure the contract in a way that best fit their cap.

Meanwhile, the Vikings offered a similar contract. However, Darnold turned it down, likely because he believed Minnesota saw McCarthy as its starting quarterback. Similarly, Daniel Jones chose to sign with the Indianapolis Colts despite receiving a comparable offer from the Vikings because he thought he had a better chance of beating out Anthony Richardson.

The Vikings made a similar offer to Sam Darnold as the Seahawks did this past offseason, per @TomPelissero. pic.twitter.com/2P00ifrUTu

— NFL Network (@nflnetwork) November 30, 2025

Look back at the reporting from 2002 when the Twins released David Ortiz. They didn’t want Ortiz to take them to arbitration for $1.5 million, felt Matt LeCroy would make an adequate designated hitter, and wanted space for a Rule 5 pick.

That feels absurd in retrospect, because those are lousy reasons to cut a Hall of Famer. Ultimately, the Twins’ cardinal sin was being cheap (sound familiar?) and unwilling to pay a star player.

Meanwhile, O’Connell has always been all-in on McCarthy. Darnold and Jones knew it, so they left. As a result, the Vikings left a former third-overall pick who resurrected his career in Minnesota, only to leave and win a Super Bowl with another team.