Kurt Warner believes

[MaroonBells]

https://twitter.com/TPPSkol/status/1831154747585302875

[StickierBuns]

Would love to see it. And if the optimists turn out to be right, he'll need to start out well. The Giants game away is almost ideal: no home fan pressure and a winnable game.

[purplefaithful]

Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell are not alone in thinking Darnold has more to offer in the right setting.

“So often in the league we correlate, offense is good, the quarterback is good,” said ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky, an NFL quarterback from 2005-17. “But it’s the most dependent position in all of pro sports. It’s really hard to play that position well unless you have three things going for you.”

Orlovsky listed a sound play caller in O’Connell, a veteran offensive line led by left tackle Christian Darrisaw, and one of the NFL’s best receivers in Justin Jefferson.

“He’s never had any of those three things,” Orlovsky said of Darnold. “It’s a completely different world for him to experience.”

Starting when the team reported for work in April, Vikings coaches poured their energy into preparing Darnold to replace Kirk Cousins as starter. That preparation gained more weight when McCarthy, the 10th overall pick, suffered a season-ending torn meniscus in his right knee during his first preseason game in August.

An emphasis with Darnold has been to play with a “quieted mind,” as O’Connell says, where the overload of playbook information and step counts — three, five or seven steps and then your eyes need to be here, then there — become second nature. In this Vikings offense, quarterbacks are burdened with long play calls and often juggle multiple calls at the line of scrimmage, read the defense and get the offense into the right play while the 40-second play clock ticks.

“I thought he had really good command of it,” said McCown, the Vikings QBs coach. “It’s hard. You jump from system to system in the NFL and try to kind of offload the old information, download the new information, and not get those wires crossed is tricky.”

“If you can narrow your focus, that’s where your talent can come to life,” he added. “Sam was the No. 3 pick for a reason. There’s a lot of natural talent there that we’re seeing him tap into.”

O’Connell doesn’t want Darnold feeling like he has to do too much, which Darnold said he understands after seeing Purdy dish the ball to 49ers playmakers.
“Just understanding better the role of a quarterback,” Darnold said, “and that’s like what coach O’Connell says to me: just to kind of play point guard, give it to our guys in space and let them go do work.”

O’Connell doesn’t want any early hiccups to define his new quarterback, as they have in Darnold’s career to this point.

“We all sometimes have our greatest growth in moments of failure,” O’Connell said. “The level of that failure at [quarterback] tends to be magnified because it’s for all to see. 

Wins or losses tend to get put on that player regardless of circumstance around them or the voice in the headset or all the things that goes into it. … I’m confident in the combination of all those things for us here in Minnesota.”

Source: Startribune

[hogjowlsjohnny]

Would love to see it. And if the optimists turn out to be right, he'll need to start out well. The Giants game away is almost ideal: no home fan pressure and a winnable game.

I'm optimistic but feel the key is how Darnold performs under pressure. Giants aren't a good team but will be able to get some pressure on Darnold. So we should will have a good idea going forward after that game.
Protect the ball and win without the outcome being in doubt is the best we can hope for.
My expectation is a road win. We shall see.

[JR44]

Someone needs to tell Kurt it is officially after Labor Day