Sam Darnold’s bid to get back to the Super Bowl for a second successive season after reaching it as a backup quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers last year ended early on Monday as the Minnesota Vikings went down in the Wild Card Round.

Darnold had enjoyed a hugely impressive comeback season as the Vikings’ starter. However, a hesitant performance in a blowout defeat to the Los Angeles Rams will prompt big questions about his future. He is a free agent this offseason after signing a one-year deal with the Vikings last offseason, and Minnesota has first-round pick J.J. McCarthy waiting in the wings having missed all of the 2024 campaign through injury.

Where Darnold will play his football in 2025 remains to be seen, but his excellent year for the Vikings looks set to have a considerable impact on the 49ers’ plans to bounce back from their 6-11 season in 2024.

Indeed, per Over The Cap, the loss of Darnold this year is set to net them a fourth-round compensatory selection.

OTC projects compensatory picks using the formula explained below

Contracts are ranked via a Final Numerical Value based on the sum of points awarded as follows:

An inverse ranking of the contract’s Average Per Year (APY)

One point each for each percentage point of snaps played on offense or defense, with a minimum requirement of 25%. (Kickers and punters earn points based upon statistical performance.)

20 or 5 points based upon being honored by the AP All Pro or PFWA On Field Awards lists.

The round for each contract is then assigned on a percentile basis, with the top five percent placed in the third round and contracts below that group but still in the top 10 percent placed in the fourth round, which is where Darnold’s Final Numerical Value of 1,783 landed him.

Darnold’s APY of $10 million was ranked 1,684, with a further 99 points added after he played 99.4 percent of the offensive snaps with McCarthy out, the combined tally putting him just on the right side of the cut-off between the fourth and fifth round.

While the NFL will not finalize compensatory selections until March, it appears the 49ers are set to be in a strong position because of Darnold’s success.

If OTC’s projection proves correct, the 49ers will have two extra fourth-rounders, Chase Young netting them another after he departed for the New Orleans Saints. On top of that, they will land a compensatory seventh-round because of the departure of Ray-Ray McCloud to the Atlanta Falcons.

They are already sure of an additional third-round pick because of the hires of DeMeco Ryans as head coach of the Houston Texans and Ran Carthon as general manager of the Tennessee Titans in 2023. Carthon was fired by the Titans following their dreadful 2024 season.

Those extra mid-round picks would be key extra capital for the Niners, who were forced to forfeit their fifth-round pick in this year’s draft due to administrative payroll accounting errors in the 2022 season.

Despite a disappointing campaign, the members of the 49ers’ 2024 draft class impressed substantially in their first year in the league, with several players emerging as contributors and likely future starters.

Picking 11th in the first round, the 49ers need to take advantage of their position in this year’s draft to deliver another strong class. Darnold’s success with Minnesota may have come to a grinding halt in the postseason, but it looks as if his otherwise memorable 2024 will improve the odds of another standout 49ers draft by giving them an extremely useful day-three pick.