This Vikings team blows! They screwed up a good thing by dumping Darnold
Pretty much ruined the franchise, the defense even blows now
Agreed. I don't know who the deciding vote was for letting Darnold (and Dimes) walk... but that is looking like a potential franchise-killing move so far in 2025.
Now stuck with a complete unknown as the future and a complete known as the place-holding disaster.
That thought (about Darnold and Jones) certainly crossed my mind last night. I'm not sure it's fair, though, for a couple of reasons. One, hindsight is 20/20. Literally nobody saw this coming from Jones. As for Darnold, he literally wilted under pressure at the end of last season. So, yeah, I think the consensus (at the end of last year) was that he's a good game-manager with the right coach (KOC) putting him in a position to be successful. But, he's simply not very good under significant pressure, and as a result, will only get you so far. I fully expect the same thing to happen this year (if he gets that far). SEA MIGHT make the playoffs, but Darnold isn't leading anyone to the SB, in my opinion. And, given the money he was getting, that's a lot to pay for someone who's upside might be a 1st (or at best) 2nd round playoff loss.
I do have to wonder if KOC thought about keeping Jones around. They could have done so for about 1/3 of what Darnold is making (this year) with no future obligations. That's still a pretty expensive backup QB, but you get what you pay for (and clearly going the "cheaper" route with Wentz isn't working out so well). Wentz should be nothing more than a 3rd stringer at this point in his career, or a backup on a really bad team. Which might be what the Vikings are. But, I think they had higher expectations than that.
All of that said, I still maintain that a lot of this boils down to the offensive line, much more than who's playing QB. To start the season with no Darrisaw, McCarthy was running for his life on every snap. Darrisaw comes back, and it's night and day different. Then, the rest of the line starts to fall apart, and it's "McCarthy is a bust" again. Wentz comes in, line is somewhat healthy, and he's going to take the #1 job. Line falls apart even more, and you get what we saw last night. Bottom line... The #1 thing I was most excited/optimistic about this off-season was the resources they put into fixing the O-Line. Needless to say, the results have been underwhelming. That's an understatement. They've been brutally disappointing. Goes back to the saying that your O-Line is only as good as your 7th/8th guys. With no depth, it's a problem. And, frankly, maybe the guys they acquired this off-season weren't good acquisitions, in hindsight. Sounded good at the time, but maybe there's a reason IND let those guys go.
The McCarthy piece is a mystery to me. On the night he supposedly hurt his ankle, there was no talk of an injury. Then he's got a sprain right after. That was six weeks ago or more. Strange, to say the least.