Sam Darnold and Drew Lock have now both played two games this season with virtually the same Seahawks offense around them, and it’s the backup who is carrying most of the water for a Seattle passing attack ranked in the top-five of many key statistics, both traditional and analytical.
Actually, Lock is third in expected points added (EPA) per dropback and Darnold is 27th. That sounds a lot worse for Darnold than it is (among qualified starters, he’s 18th), and if you don’t like using EPA or analytics, it’s just as simple to put it like this and be totally truthful:
Drew Lock has produced better results than Sam Darnold
That’s a true statement. But it’s not a full story.
The most unexpected thing about how the Seahawks played against the Chargers
Despite L.A. only blitzing 26.9% of the time (lowest Seattle has faced this season), they were able to pressure Sam Darnold on 53.8% of his dropbacks (the highest rate of the season). That’s not just the highest rate of pressure that a Seahawks quarterback has faced in 2026, it’s almost 20% higher than next-highest.
In fact, Darnold has been pressured on 41.3% of his dropbacks compared to only 31.4% for Drew Lock—and Darnold is already the quarterback who narrowly avoided a season-ending injury on the first drive of the season because of pressure.
Lock’s opponents: 31.6% pressure rate.
Darnold’s opponents: 38.9%.
So when we merely look at the two quarterbacks through a lens that “Lock’s stats are much better than Darnold’s stats. Is Lock better?”, we willingly overlook context that can at worst help us understand their differences with greater clarity and explain why Seattle’s offense has seemed to stall more often with Darnold.
Well, if Darnold wasn’t under pressure 40% of the time, he proved as recently as Sunday that he is the same effective quarterback who won the Super Bowl last year: Darnold went 10-of-11 with two touchdowns when he wasn’t under pressure against the Chargers.
And the weirdest thing of all perhaps? The Chargers defense has not been nearly this good at getting to the quarterback in any of their other three games. They had Darnold under pressure for 60% of his dropbacks in the first half, but they’ve only been a ~35% pressure defense before that:
What we see here is that the Chargers pass defense was much worse against the Cardinals and Raiders, but stepped up against the Bills and Seahawks. They had a 38.7% pressure rate against Josh Allen, but that went up to 53.8% against Darnold. A week ago against the Moons, Darnold had a “normal” amount of pressure (36%) and was sacked zero times and his individual results were actually quite good aside from the two interceptions.
Whereas Washington got obliterated by the Cowboys passing offense, Darnold was better against them by EPA per pass (EPA explained) than the Eagles—and much better than Daniel Jones and the Colts. Don’t the Seahawks and fans owe Sam Darnold enough room to compare him and Lock beyond side-by-side stats and turnovers in a two-game sample size each?