The moment everything changed for Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold

That was a clear look on veteran quarterback Sam Darnold’s face last month after the Vikings earned a win over the Jacksonville Jaguars.

As he answered questions about his disastrous performance, Darnold still seemed very confident. He spoke with a sense of calm. It didn’t bother him at all that he had thrown three interceptions.

Maybe because he knew his mistakes were avoidable.

“I need to take care of football a lot better,” Darnold said. “That’s pretty obvious.”

As he replayed the interceptions in his head in real time, Darnold knew they weren’t all the same.

A deflected ball was intercepted near midfield that could have gone either way. There was an interception in the end zone that he would have liked to have placed a little better. There was an interception near the goal line that he knew he should have thrown elsewhere.

“Just continue to understand situations throughout the course of a game,” Darnold said. “We’ll continue to watch the tape and get better.”

That’s exactly what Darnold did. He could have crumbled in the face of adversity. Instead, he responded with arguably the best stage of his career.

The stats speak for themselves as Darnold has taken his game to the next level. In the win over the Tennessee Titans, he completed 20 of 32 passes for 246 yards and two touchdowns; 22 of 34 passes for 330 yards and two touchdowns in a win over the Chicago Bears; 21 of 31 passes for 235 yards and two touchdowns in a win over the Arizona Cardinals and 22 of 28 passes for 347 yards and five touchdowns in a win over the Atlanta Falcons.

Darnold’s emergence has helped the Vikings establish themselves as a legitimate Super Bowl contender heading into a prime-time game against the Bears on Monday night at US Bank Stadium.

“You don’t know what we have in this building,” receiver Justin Jefferson said. “You didn’t know Sam was going to come in and be the leader that he is.”

“He played in poor weather in training camp, so we knew what we had,” receiver Jordan Addison said. “Now he’s putting it on display for everyone else to see.”

As head coach Kevin O’Connell reflected on Darnold’s improvement, he called his reaction last month a turning point.

There was something about the way Darnold handled himself immediately after his fights. There was no sulking. Just a commitment to get back to work upon his return to the TCO Performance Center.

When he went back to the drawing board, Darnold pointed to some principles he learned from O’Connell, offensive coordinator Wes Phillips, quarterbacks coach Josh McCown and assistant quarterbacks coach Grant Udinski.

How were his feet aligned during his interceptions? Where did his eyes look down? Were there other options he could have taken with the ball?

“In a lot of ways it was almost self-coaching,” O’Connell said. “Just an incredible moment of growth for him to come back the next week and start stacking.”

There was something powerful about Darnold being able to implement some of the corrections that needed to be made without anyone having to tell him. It was proof that he was embracing everything he had learned up to that point.

Not that anyone was surprised.

“You know, whether there was a lot of praise or whether some games didn’t necessarily go the way he wanted, he didn’t let it affect him,” Phillips said. “He was consistent in his demeanor, his approach and his work ethic.”

It was all on display this week as the Vikings prepared for Monday Night Football. When asked how he reacted after that disastrous performance last month, Darnold pointed out some of the techniques and fundamentals while showing how confident he really is

“Looking back at this game, I wasn’t too disappointed with the decisions I made. Where I located the ball or how I threw the ball was the biggest disappointment for me,” Darnold said. “I think the biggest thing for me is to keep making good decisions and then when I can release the ball, I release it with confidence. I think that’s been the biggest thing for me in the last few weeks. I’m just going to keep doing this.”