Sam Darnold leaves Vikings wondering what could have been

To finally see a USC football quarterback win the Super Bowl, Trojan fans will have to root for a Seattle Seahawks team that eliminated the hometown, division rival Rams in the NFC championship game. It's a weird dynamic.

But another weird layer to this story is that Sam Darnold's success as Seattle's signal caller may have gotten a Stanford alum fired.

I'm talking about former Minnesota Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. How does the general manager of a rival team connect to Darnold? Kole Musgrove wrote about it over at Seahawks Wire:

"It's always interesting to think about the road not taken," Musgrove wrote. "Perhaps when discussing that in the context of professional football, we should be calling it the N "If" L. Right now, there is likely no one thinking about said road more than Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah."

"Sorry, I need to clarify: former Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, as he was fired by the organization on Friday. Adofo-Mensah leaves Minnesota after four years managing the football team, but he will likely be best remembered for a deal he didn't do."

"Last year, the Vikings had a choice to either keep Sam Darnold or roll the dice with JJ McCarthy. Minnesota ultimately chose McCarthy over Darnold, which allowed him to wind up in Seattle where the Seahawks were more than happy to have him. At the time, the logic was... somewhat defensible. McCarthy was a top ten draft pick and teams that hit on quarterbacks playing on their relatively inexpensive rookie contracts often have great success."

"However, I will argue and say it's only somewhat defensible, because what was truly the best case scenario with JJ McCarthy? That he somehow plays as great as a quarterback who threw for 4,319 yards, 35 touchdowns and guided the team to 14 wins? Well, if that's the case, why not just stick with the quarterback you know can do that!? This is quite literally the classic Family Guy "boat vs mystery box" bit."

This article originally appeared on Trojans Wire: Vikings picked JJ McCarthy over Sam Darnold, GM fired as a result