Sam Darnold shouldn't have happened
All of these teams passed on Darnold for other QBs and the Seahawks couldn't be more happy about it
As the Vikings were en route to a 37-10 loss to the Chargers, the topic of Minnesota employing both Sam Darnold and Daniel Jones in 2024 became a trendy subject on Thursday night. By net and adjusted net yards per pass attempt, Darnold is first and Jones is second.
The Vikings have been forced to ride with Carson Wentz, who last started more than one game in 2022 when he went 2-5 with the Washington Moons. At this point it’s not even absurd to think that maybe Wentz could have been a reclamation steal. But since he’s not…Minnesota GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah, head coach Kevin O’Connell, and owner Zygi Wilf have to face public criticism for essentially letting Darnold take the blame for their collapse last season.
The Vikings had 117 net passing yards against the Chargers, their third game of the year under 140. That’s tied with the Bengals and Jets for the most in the NFL.
On the contrary, the Seahawks have managed to weather the storm of a quarterback carousel by signing Darnold to a contract that only had $37.5 million fully guaranteed, the 19th-highest such mark among veteran quarterbacks AND they did so at a time when over half of the league is struggling to find competency at the position.
Sam Darnold shouldn’t have happened to the Seattle Seahawks. But good thing he did.
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They did not sign Sam Darnold:
0-7 New York Jets — Chose to replace Aaron Rodgers with Justin Fields for $30 million guaranteed. Although the move hasn’t been made official as of Thursday night, Tyrod Taylor is expected to replace Fields as the starter in Week 8.
Of course, the idea of the Jets signing Darnold is almost as absurd as him going back to the Panthers but it wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility. ESPN’s Bob Wischusen was praying that Darnold’s last 2 games were bad enough to make him only attractive to the Jets:
“Oh, I hope it crushes his market to the point that the Jets are the only team that can get their hands on him and then bring him here—1000%. Then see if you can get his price down to the low 20 millions and then sign him to a five-year contract after he won 14 games this year and bring him here tomorrow. That would be my take. I would have no problem if Sam Darnold were the Jets quarterback starting next season.”
Little did Wischusen know that he was right about Darnold’s market fading, but no QB really signs 5-year, $100 million contracts anymore. Unfortunately for Wischusen, the $20 million per year guy that they got instead was Fields.
2-5 Cleveland Browns — Chose to sign Joe Flacco and drafted two mid-round quarterbacks who offer little or no upside. The Browns are hamstrung by Deshaun Watson’s contract but signing Darnold may have been semi-possible if Cleveland was as aggressive in their pursuit of him as they were for the guy who was facing a lengthy suspension, to say the least.
As comically bad as the Browns have been since 1999, they would have been able to offer Kevin Stefanski as a head coach and an offensive line that most people have respected. Instead Cleveland chose the cheapest route possible and then traded Flacco to a division rival in need because the Browns just don’t respect themselves enough. Browns SI blogger Spencer German still didn’t think Darnold was good enough for Cleveland:
The Browns, meanwhile, may need a quarterback, but should stay away from the former Jets flameout. Despite his renaissance season, he appears to be the same QB he’s always been.
1-6 Tennessee Titans — Chose to draft Cam Ward. Even if this turns out to be a brilliant decision for the franchise, don’t you think Brian Callahan wishes that he would have pushed for a proven veteran to at least hold down the fort while he was coaching for his job? Maybe someone who had 35 touchdowns and won 14 games last year and for some reason was affordable?
The Titans could have still drafted Ward, or they could have traded down and selected someone to help Darnold. The Browns were sitting there at 2, maybe move down one spot and then draft Travis Hunter or take Jacksonville’s trade offer and get the first round pick next year and pick Tetairoa McMillan.
2-5 Las Vegas Raiders — Chose to trade for Geno Smith and pay him an extra $58 million on top of his previous contract. I recently read a story about a Florida Woman who was arrested after accidentally getting overpaid $400,000 by her company and then spending it all. I feel like John Schneider could get a similar knock for this one.
Michael Silver reported that Tom Brady nixed any plans for Darnold because he “was not in favor” of that move and instead preferred Geno. Before the season started, Raiders fans said “let’s go to reddit for a victory lap”.
2-5 New York Giants — Chose to sign Russell Wilson and Jameis Winston and draft Jaxson Dart. Say what you want about Dart, it’s going to be another year of head coach Brian Daboll and GM Joe Schoen begging to keep their jobs after a 2-5 start.
Former Giant Victor Cruz was very vocal about wanting the team to sign Darnold. But he also thought that Darnold would just be a good bridge quarterback to get to Arch Manning so, you know, there is a limit to that story’s usefulness.
The Giants were rumored to be looking into Darnold and they also tried to trade for Matthew Stafford prior to signing Wilson and Winston for a combined $15 million guaranteed. When you factor in Dart’s $17 million fully-guaranteed contract, that’s $32 million on three quarterbacks, almost as much as what Darnold got from Seattle.
Dart might become a good quarterback and all that, but if you use free agency right then the Giants wouldn’t have needed him and they could have used those picks (moved up from the 2nd to the 1st by giving up two 3rds) to build a better team. Where they were sitting, the Giants could have drafted Nick Emmanwori, but thankfully of all the Seahawks they chose Russell Wilson in 2025.
1-6 New Orleans Saints — Chose to hire Kellen Moore instead of Klint Kubiak and draft Tyler Shough. You could argue that the greatest gift to the Seahawks this year was not Darnold, but Darnold with Kubiak. The Saints had Kubiak in house all year and though it is unusual to hire the OC after firing the previous HC, the Cowboys literally just did that with Brian Schottenheimer.
If a team could hire either Kubiak or Moore after this season, who do you think most of them would choose?
We all get it, the curse of the Saints salary cap, but they’re in no different shape than when they overpaid Derek Carr. Going with Spencer Rattler and Shough is a choice. Not one I would have thought is better than signing Darnold — not now and not in March when they had the chance — and they’re 1-6 with about the 25th-best QB in the league.
What else are they going to do with their top-5 next year other than over-draft a QB?
3-4 Minnesota Vikings — Chose to stick with their previous plan of turning the team over to J.J. McCarthy in 2025 and ignoring any new evidence that suggested they absolutely should not do that. Yet somehow this situation feels a little less egregious because at least Minnesota had a vision. They wanted it to turn out like Alex Smith→Patrick Mahomes and so far it hasn’t work out that way but I can applaud the effort.
The problem is that the Vikings were already Super Bowl contenders with Darnold and unlike Mahomes, there couldn’t have been behind-the-scenes clues that McCarthy would become a star: He missed the entire season with a knee injury. In his 2 starts this year, he was terrible for about 7 of those quarters. At no point last season were the Vikings ever as bad as they have been in their four losses and they also haven’t beaten a team of note.
If they had kept Darnold, which could have been as simple as using the franchise tag, they’re probably 5-2 or better right now. The interesting part is that I don’t know what else they can do next year to help McCarthy because the only glaring weakness on offense is the quarterback position.
These are not so egregious but can we talk about “What if a team had been bold?”
1-6 Miami Dolphins — It’s not lost on me that parting with Tua Tagovailoa is all but financially impossible, but all the signs were there that the Dolphins would be a disaster with Tua being the biggest roadblock to success on the player side. You can definitely put more blame on head coach Mike McDaniel and GM Chris Grier, but Tua is only an NFL starter right now because of his contract and a lack of quality backups.
I’ve always been in favor of not overpaying quarterbacks, but it is especially troublesome when they get paid $45-$60m AAV after 3-4 seasons and no playoff success. We’ve seen this with Tua, Trevor Lawrence, Dak Prescott, Kyler Murray, Jordan Love, and even Justin Herbert. We could potentially even put Lamar Jackson in there.
Although Darnold has also had no playoff success, he is a low-tier veteran contract with a really low guarantee among his peers. The Dolphins could not be bold with Darnold because they will be paying the price for caving to a QB who wanted to be paid before the team could realize the mistake they were making.
2-5 Arizona Cardinals — It would not be an overstatement to say that Jacoby Brissett gives the Cardinals at least as much of a chance to win as Murray. If it was Darnold throwing to Trey McBride and Marvin Harrison, I don’t think the Cardinals (all 5 losses are by 4 points or fewer) are in last place. A quarterback change was probably never on the table because of Murray’s contract.
We could probably also ask if the Steelers will be happy with their decision to sign Rodgers instead of a better quarterback who is 14 years younger.
The Seahawks were in a strong enough position to sign Sam Darnold in part because they’ve been steadfast in their belief that quarterbacks are overpaid and the franchise doesn’t cave to player demands like the Cardinals, the Dolphins, the Jaguars, and so on:
They traded Russell Wilson when he wanted a new contract
They traded Geno Smith when he wanted a new contract
They avoided a trade for Deshaun Watson or Justin Fields (when he went to the Steelers) and similar situations
It is not surprising that these players ended up in dysfunctional situations, including Rodgers on the Jets in 2023-2024.
Will the Seahawks take the same hardline approach with Darnold if he continues to play at a high level for them between now and probably the end of 2026? It’s easy to say “it depends” but it really does and it probably depends on how successul Seattle is in the playoffs with him. The Seahawks extended Wilson after going to two Super Bowls, but traded him after the team had only won one playoff game in the previous five years.
They extended Smith after making the playoffs, but traded him after missing the next two.
It may seem trivial or unfair to put all of the blame or credit for winning playoff games on the quarterback…and yet we all do it. We count rings for Brady and Peyton Manning and even Eli Manning. We use it as the reason that they do or don’t deserve to make the Hall of Fame. We cite Dak as an “overpay” but Joe Burrow as a “steal” despite them having almost the exact same regular season stats and win-loss record and a history of injuries.
Burrow 2021-2025: 61 games, 129 TD, 41 INT, 38-23 record
Dak 2021-2025: 60 games, 123 TD, 45 INT, 37-22-1 record
Dak is 2-5 in the playoffs. Burrow is 5-2. Well, their teams have those records. But we call one better than the other largely because of what their teams did in the playoffs. Hard disagree?
I think the Seahawks will use these next 2 seasons to evaluate if they can build a championship caliber team around Sam Darnold and if they decide they can—or know they can because they won already—he’ll make a lot more money in Seattle. And that’s a decision that the Seahawks get to make (that they shouldn’t have been allowed to make) because of all of those non-playoff teams making no-playoffs mistakes.
Seaside Joe 2426
I sit with a group who has had season tickets from year one. When Geno and DK was treaded and Darnold singed you would think the world was ending. Half the group talked about selling all their 2025 tickets as the season was a lost cause, I was the outlier of the group believing in Sam growth.
I worked for 25 years in higher education and saw the changes in young adults and I knew from my reading that the average male brain isn’t fully developed until 25. As SSJ and many others have pointed out most QB need development time in the NFL regardless what they did in college, they need to mature. Sam did this development with the Jets and Panthers. Sam Darnold was 26 when he went to MIN and 27 when he signed with the Hawks. He now a “professional” using his education and experience at work.
If the Seahawks stay healthy this season it feels like 2012 and the next three games will tell us if it’s 2012 agin or if we’re looking at 2026. I am so excited to be a Seahawk fan in 2025 as the sky is the limit and a supper bowl is in the near future.
The Hawks have been very prudent with their QB decisions since PC/JS came along, and probably longer. Russ was a low risk/high reward 3rd round pick. Geno was an adequate replacement when Russ got too expensive. Sam is a more than adequate replacement for Gino after Gino expressed displeasure. I've always disliked the idea of overpaying one player and then being unable to build a decent team around them and JS appears to share my view. Who cares if your QB can thread a needle at 90 yards if he doesn't have time to throw or anyone to catch the ball?