Sam Darnold should feel like the most disrespected quarterback in the league

Jared Goff, Geno Smith, and Brock Purdy seem held to a different standard

Sam Darnold is partly responsible for all the disrespect coming his way, but regardless of how he got here the Seattle Seahawks are betting $37 million that he’s motivated to prove all the skeptics wrong next season. Skeptics who believe that not only is Darnold worse than the likes of Jared Goff, Geno Smith, and Brock Purdy, but he’s a lot worse and largely because of fading out in the final two games.

To which I say…

Jared Goff threw 5 interceptions in his last two games.

PFF’s QB rankings have Darnold posted up at 26th in the league among 32 starters, behind the likes of two quarterbacks who have yet to even take a regular season snap.

The big question for Darnold and the Seahawks is which version of the quarterback shows up in 2025. Will it be the one we saw from 2018 to 2023, when his highest-graded season was just a 66.0 as he struggled with decision-making and offensive consistency? Or will it be the quarterback who earned an 85.8 grade over the first 17 weeks of the 2024 season and helped lead the Vikings to 14 wins? His late-season regression and playoff struggles were concerning, and he’ll be working with a less talented supporting cast in Seattle.

Darnold is behind J.J. McCarthy and Cam Ward (no career snaps), as well as Michael Penix, and essentially tied with Russell Wilson and Justin Fields in the two spots right below him.

Though Darnold left the Vikings for a $100 million contract because they had invested a first round pick into McCarthy last year, Wilson and Fields were both forced out of Pittsburgh because the Steelers would rather take their chances of eventually landing Aaron Rodgers than go another day with either of them as insurance.

Sam Darnold does need to sink his “prove-it shot” with Seattle to turn more skeptics around in his favor and admittedly there’s a chance he will miss. But it seems like some of the arguments against him have not applied to others.

PFF calls Goff “a top-10 quarterback” with or without Ben Johnson, but fails to mention that he threw three interceptions in the Lions’ 45-31 wild card loss to the Moons.

PFF writes that 10th-ranked Geno Smith “protects the football” but doesn’t explain why he threw 15 interceptions in 2024 (3 more than Darnold) with a 2.6% INT rate (0.4% higher than Darnold) or that he’s consistently been among the league leaders in interceptable-passes and dropped interceptions.

• Geno threw 13 TD/4 INT on 54 red zone pass attempts

• Darnold threw 26 TD/3 INT on 93 red zone pass attempts

PFF says that 11th-ranked Purdy “may be a product of the system and surrounding talent” but excuses this caveat because “he still led one of the NFL’s most efficient offenses”. Why are some QBs okay to be game managers but others are not?

It’s been argued that Darnold “only had a breakout season” (5th in yards, 5th in touchdowns, 6th in passer rating, 7th in adjusted yards per attempt) because of Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, and head coach Kevin O’Connell.

Is it any different that Goff has Ben Johnson and a top-3 offensive line or that Purdy was a top-5 passer in 2023 when Trent Williams, Christian McCaffrey, and Brandon Aiyuk were all healthy but struggled last season when they weren’t?

Seahawks fans shouldn’t take offense to the fact that few people think that Darnold’s success is repeatable outside of Minnesota — The Ringer’s last rankings had him at 22, as does CBS Sports, but NFL.com’s Nick Shook put him at 13th — but it is notable that at least he fits into a mentality that Seattle sports is used to: “The national media has overlooked us.”

One media source that hasn’t is my favorite Xs and Os channel, that being All_22_Films, which posted this video about Darnold this week:

I won’t cover the breakdown bit-by-bit, so tell me in the comments what your takeaways were from All-22 if you watch it.

Additional Sam Darnold stats/videos

There’s a Twitter thread by a user named Jacob Gibbs that caught my attention on Saturday. All the “VIDEO” links below will go to film cutups of raw, unfiltered Sam Darnold footage with the Vikings in 2024. In addition, Gibbs posted these stats from a fantasy website that I found relevant to today’s post.

VIDEO: Every Darnold throw of 20+ air yards from a clean pocket

Per Jacob Gibbs with data from Fantasy Points Data, Darnold is roughly above-average on deep pass attempts with no pressure.

It seems as though deep passing was actually Darnold’s strength in 2024, so offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak is likely to take advantage of that with Seattle’s offense in 2025. The new weapon who I am most curious to see used in this offense as a deep threat would be rookie tight end Elijah Arroyo.

VIDEO: Every Darnold throw of 10-19 air yards with no pressure

According to this data, Darnold was solidly below-average on intermediate pass attempts in 2024.

It’s worth noting that MVP Josh Allen was ranked 31st on catchable ball rate in the same category. However, Allen was ranked 2nd in both “highly-accurate throw%” and “highly-accurate to an open receiver”.

Both Cooper Kupp and Jaxson Smith-Njigba are likely to be heavily-utilized in the intermediate area of the field. They are also two of the best receivers in the NFL when it comes to creating separation and finding holes in the zones, so Darnold can’t repeat these off-target and catchable ball rates again in 2025.

If Kupp and JSN are getting open 10-15 yards downfield and the offensive line isn’t allowing pressure, Darnold needs to hold up his end of the bargain and throw them catchable balls. Otherwise, this really might be his only season with the Seahawks.

VIDEO: Every Darnold throw of 5-9 air yards without pressure

I do not have the data for Darnold on short passes, but the clip posted above (12 minutes long) says more than data. This is an area where Vikings fans felt Darnold struggled, but he also had more issues when he was under pressure.

The Seahawks hope that they have at least fixed the offensive line problem, and then it’s up to Darnold to fix the Darnold problem. Overall, I think the data and the film show a quarterback who will be more than capable of running Kubiak’s offense to the degree that Kubiak, John Schneider, and Mike Macdonald all expect.

Sam Darnold will not likely ever be the player he was expected to be as a third overall pick, but I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t prove to be as good or better than Jared Goff, Geno Smith, and Brock Purdy.

Or J.J. McCarthy, for that matter.

Seaside Joe 2272