Is it Sam Darnold's championship to lose?
Nobody has done more to improve their career narrative than Darnold
If you were to rank every active quarterback by their Hall of Fame chances, most fans would not have Sam Darnold in their top-10, even after he won the Super Bowl. Darnold would need to win another just to enter the bottom of the conversation, similar to other two-time winners like Eli Manning and Jim Plunkett.
But consider how much better Darnold’s position is now compared to two years ago.
Has any player in NFL history improved their Hall of Fame chances more in two years than what Darnold has done since 2024?
Because it’s not just about Darnold adding 31 wins to his resume, including a Super Bowl. It’s also about where he started, and Darnold was one more bad year away from joining Josh Rosen in Whatcouldabeensburg.
In a busy media offseason for someone who was a lot less popular a couple years ago, Darnold has taken blame for things not working out in New York and Carolina, said he got a PhD in football during his year on the bench in San Francisco (thanks, Kyle), held no ill will against the Vikings for not re-signing him (thanks, Kwesi), and said he should have played better in the Super Bowl.
“I missed way too many throws,” he said. “We still won. Our defense balled out. I didn’t turn the ball over, which helped.
“But dude, to win the Super Bowl that way, I was kinda bummed. I want(ed) to score 40 points, you know what I mean? I want to go out there and ball out, and it’s just, dang, I didn’t play my best football in the Super Bowl? That sucks.”
It’s his ability to take accountability for his mistakes that has helped Darnold go from punchline to having a puncher’s chance of winning MVP and multiple Super Bowls.
Here is Sam Darnold at the end of 2023:
He had a career passer rating of 78.3, a QBR of 45.9, and averaged 6.7 yards per attempt. His best season was going 7-6 with the Jets in 2019, throwing 19 touchdowns and 13 interceptions. But he had zero career playoff appearances, was completing under 60% of his throws, and averaged a touchdown on 3.5% of his attempts, compared to an interception on 3.1%.
Darnold had been traded once and signed as a backup with the 49ers after receiving no offers to start.
Here is Sam Darnold since the start of 2024:
After he had won 21 games in six years, Darnold has since won 28 regular season games in two years. To be fair, if the 49ers had chosen to start Darnold in 2023, he probably would have won a lot of games and had more success that year than any season before it. But being a backup was the card he was dealt after flaming out with the Jets and Panthers.
Darnold’s TD% is 5.9% (up 2.4%) and his INT% is 2.5% (down 0.6%) on a much more favorable TD/INT ratio of 60-to-26. He only threw 63 touchdowns in his first six seasons combined.
His passer rating in the last two years is 100.9 and his QBR is 57.3.
In two seasons, Darnold has improved his CAREER passer rating by almost 10 points, climbed over 62% completions, and proven that not only can he be a productive starting quarterback, but that he can do it with two completely different teams.
Darnold quite famously made history by not only going 14-3 in back-to-back seasons, but doing so with two different teams.
Not only that, but both times Darnold found himself in a pressure cooker at the end of those seasons, first needing to play the 14-2 Lions in Week 18 of 2024, and second needing to beat the 49ers for Seattle to earn the top seed in 2025. Despite winning 14 games both times, Sam Darnold hasn’t had a single week of relaxation to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
Even after winning the Super Bowl, Darnold still laments the self-inflicted idea that he “sucked” in that game.
And that if it wasn’t for Seattle’s defense, the Seahawks—and Darnold—would not be Super Bowl champions. To what degree are you going to agree with Sam Darnold on that point?
In The Tournament of THE Champions, we are down to our final four Seahawks:
Sam Darnold
Jaxon Smith-Njigba
Charles Cross
Byron Murphy II
I would have never guessed that three of the final four would be offensive players, but that probably says more about the depth on Seattle’s defense and the lack of a weak link than it does about a strength on offense or the Seahawks being held together by one star player.
That’s really more of a “Rams plan” than what John Schneider and Mike Macdonald are trying to do in Seattle.
The Rams are putting all the pressure on Myles Garrett and Trent McDuffie to get L.A. over the hump against the Seahawks and get back to the Super Bowl in 2026. Once unable to do anything against the Rams, Darnold has since thrown 5 straight touchdowns without an interception—plus a key two-point conversion in OT—and beat them in overtime and the NFC Championship.
People are going to say that I’m arguing that Darnold is a Hall of Famer because he won one Super Bowl, but that’s not what I said at all.
I said that a couple of years ago, Darnold stood a snowball’s chance in hell, and now he’s more like an ice cube’s chance Death Valley. He’s packed up his shit and moved from Whatcouldabeensburg to Letswaitandseeport.
There are still going to be fans who say that the Seahawks could have won that Super Bowl with Drew Lock or almost any other quarterback. Darnold might even be one of those naysayers himself. But don’t just listen to him …
What do you say?
(1) Sam Darnold vs (5) Charles Cross
Cross pulls maybe the only upset of the Quarterfinals, beating Leonard Williams 56% to 44%.
Some would say that if you don’t have Darnold, you still have Cross, but that if you don’t have a solid left tackle that you don’t have Darnold either.
(2) Jaxon Smith-Njigba vs (3) Byron Murphy II
Murphy is the last defensive player standing, but could he have beaten Charles Cross? Was he just lucky to face Abe Lucas, who he beat 79% to 21%? In round 2, he beat Julian Love 92% to 8%. Is Murphy the most important player on Seattle’s defense?
Or is he just the last one left standing to represent them?
JSN beat Ernest Jones 94% to 6%.
What’s your best argument for either Cross or Murphy making the finals?
More from the Four
These players lost in the last round, but who do you think has the best argument for being at least fifth?
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