The more things change, the more he stays the Sam
Sam Darnold's next contract extension won't be coming any time soon
When I was thinking about how to start this article, the same word kept coming up which is rare because I work as hard as I possibly can to not be redundant. It’s hard, if not impossible, to be less redundant than I am.
The word that I kept re-using was “genuine”.
When Sam Darnold did his first on-field interview after the Super Bowl he said that “he wouldn’t have it any other way” than to win a championship with the Seahawks and to me he sounded genuine. It would be easy to say that a quarterback would say that about any team that he won a Super Bowl with (because any quarterback would) but in Darnold’s case there’s a rare story behind his path to this point:
Three teams BLAMED Sam Darnold for their struggles and got rid of him.
We’re not talking about teams that didn’t know what they had in Darnold, like you might say about Kurt Warner or Nick Foles, but instead three franchises that made an investment in Darnold and then outright blamed him for their problems as they were kicking him out the door.
The Jets traded him without ever attempting to give him a number one receiver or a legitimate play caller
The Panthers essentially shut the door after one half-season and then acquired Baker Mayfield to push him to the bench the next year
The Vikings helped push the narrative that it was Darnold’s fault that they lost their last two games
(The 49ers were in no real position to start Darnold in 2023, although they might wish that they had.)
And you know what the lowest blow is that Darnold’s ever taken about a former team that gave up on him? Maybe just that he wouldn’t have it any other way than to win a Super Bowl with the Seahawks. Given the chance last week to gloat that he’s had more success than all of his former teams, Darnold instead said that he “loved” his time with the Jets and Panthers.
"You don't want to make the same mistakes again, but...the days in New York, the days in Carolina, those were part of my journey. They're part of my experience, and I loved every single part of it, yeah, there were some lows that sucked, I'm not gonna lie to you, you know, and that's part of it."
Not surprising for a guy who’s first appraisal about his Super Bowl performance was that he could have been better.
Without spending too much time on his predecessor, Darnold’s post-game attitude comes off as quite a bit different than the quarterback who was gloating that he didn’t write back to haters because he won his very first start after replacing Russell Wilson, a one-point win over a bad Broncos team in which most of the credit belonged to Seattle’s defense.
And I would actually love to chalk that up to one guy letting out a huge sigh of relief after he clawed his way back to being a starter from spending seven years on the bench because that night had to be special for Geno Smith. If not for the fact that this he was still that quarterback last year when he mocked Raiders fans for putting any blame on him for losing.
“If it don’t look right, blame it on me. If your kids mess up at school, blame it on me. Car break down going to work? Blame it on me.”
It would almost sound like Smith taking accountability if he wasn’t the same guy who said he was happy to be leaving the Seahawks (the only organization that believed in him for almost a decade), then flipped off Seahawks fans, then flipped off Raiders fans.
I never heard Geno Smith say, “I was the one responsible for my downfall with the Jets*” or “I should have been better when Pete Carroll gave me a chance to start for the Seahawks” or “I’m grateful to be $100 million richer because of the Seahawks”.
I’m not going to tell him what he should have said when asked about being written off and he had his “witty” remark about not writing back, but maybe something along the lines of taking accountability for the very valid criticisms of his career to that point instead of blaming the critics (not sure they ever gave Geno permission to “blame it on me”) and sprinkling in somewhere that he still had 16 more games left to prove himself would have at least made it seem like seven years on the bench humbled him.
“They wrote me off, I ain’t write back though. That’s the problem. I ain’t write back. Let’s go.”
So just to recap:
Geno: I ain’t write back though. Blame it on me (sarcasm). Raises a middle finger to his own fans.
And.
Darnold: I don’t want to make the same mistakes again. I still loved it. Raises a Lombardi trophy to his own fans.
You know what? I think the Seahawks got an upgrade. Genuinely.
Darnold Demeanor
I don’t know what Sam Darnold was like at USC, New York, Carolina, San Francisco, or Minnesota, but with Seattle his demeanor always seems to stay the same whether the Seahawks are up, down, won, or lost. Even after the Super Bowl in that interview I referenced and others, I don’t think you could tell from his emotions whether Darnold had just reached the pinnacle of the sport or merely had a good warm-up series in a preseason game.
This is also how Darnold is within the context of the biggest game of his life.
With former non-Super Bowl winning quarterbacks like Cam Newton saying that Darnold is a “game manager, not a game changer”, let’s talk about what it means to change the game and not get (or ask for) credit like so many others in his situation.
There was a play on Seattle’s first drive of the third quarter, still only leading 9-0, when Darnold dropped back and immediately faced pressure, avoids a sack, runs UP into the pocket with his EYES DOWNFIELD, pump fakes the DT off of his feet, before he tucks the ball and scrambles, runs to the sideline THEN CUTS INSIDE, jukes an NFL defender out of the way, and makes it 11 yards for a first down. THIS was better than any rushing play by Drake Maye:
When this moment happened, I wondered to myself whether Darnold would make a big spectacle of himself like so many other quarterbacks would (he’s not a quarterback, but Stefon Diggs spinning the ball in the fourth quarter while his team was clearly minutes away from a Super Bowl loss is a good example in the same ballpark), but instead he gets up and goes back to the huddle for the next play.
He lets A.J. Barner do the first down signal for him.
I’m not necessarily anti-celebration but there’s a time and a place for it and this was definitely one of those times when nobody would’ve blamed Darnold for a quick boast and he still didn’t take it. He had not won the Super Bowl yet.
Others, like Cam, would make a big show of a 5-yard run in the fourth quarter of a game his team is losing by 10.
Say what you want about Russell Wilson off of the field, or after he left, the Seahawks had a quarterback with that same attitude on the field and in post-game press conferences for 10 years and they won a lot of games with him.
Seattle just won a Super Bowl with a quarterback who is younger than Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, and Lamar Jackson. Could they go another 10 years with Sam Darnold?
Darnold Dinero
There were once rumors that Wilson and his agent were trying to get a raise from the Seahawks after winning the Super Bowl despite it being literally impossible for Seattle to touch his contract until 2015.
There are already rumors — as far as I know none of them have an inkling of truth to them — that the Seahawks will extend Darnold after this one. But if Seattle stays true to their self-imposed franchise rules, that won’t happen.
The Seahawks do not adjust contracts with more than one year left, so Seattle’s not going to go back to the table with Darnold’s agent after signing him to a three-year contract in 2025.
This might seem like a time for an exception with a Super Bowl winning quarterback, but keep in mind that the Seahawks were always hoping that they would win the Super Bowl in Darnold’s first season with the team. That’s why Darnold just earned a $1 million bonus for winning the Super Bowl.
Darnold’s take home pay of over $30 million in 2026 is not some absurdly unfair compensation. Lamar’s $60 million 2026 compensation? That might be unfair. Bo Nix’s $2.5 million compensation? That might be unfair.
But $30 million for a quarterback who only had two suitors as a free agent and many were arguing at the time whether Seattle could release him after the season* or not and he’s just won the Super Bowl therefore giving him immense bargaining power in the future? That seems fair.
*or in the case of Mike Salk, asking Mike Macdonald if Darnold would be benched after one practice.
The Seahawks could probably add guarantees or incentives to Darnold’s contract — for example, if Seattle guaranteed Darnold’s $35.5 million base salary in 2027, that would almost be like an extension because it means he’s assured nearly $50 million (he also has a non-guaranteed $10 million signing bonus in 2027) after the next season — but we’re probably not going to hear news of a new 4-year, $240 million contract.
Any number like that would also be a shock if it happened next year.
Why the Seahawks won the Super Bowl
A non-Seahawks fan asked me what the main reason was for Seattle’s Super Bowl win and there are a ton of great answers (draft, free agency, coaching, etc.) but at the root of ALL of those explanations is the franchise’s willingness to part with quarterbacks when they become too expensive.
Wilson wanted a raise into the stratosphere of contracts? Trade him.
Smith want a raise after missing the playoffs two years in a row? Trade him.
They could have both been good quarterbacks the next season and Seattle knew that but they have a limit and they don’t cross it. That is a bar that almost every other NFL franchise has proven willing to go over and none of them have won the Lombardi recently.
Burrow, Lamar, Allen, Dak, Love, Herbert … there are a lot of talented quarterbacks who have never been to the Super Bowl. Some of them have not even been close.
Look, Darnold took the best contract offer that he could get and that’s why his average salary barely eclipses $33 million AAV (18th at the position) but next comes the interesting test of how much he enjoyed the taste of success. And how much higher the Seahawks will be willing to go if they win or come close to another Super Bowl next season.
Tom Brady isn’t a seven-time Super Bowl winner just because he’s talented. He’s not even the most talented quarterback of his generation (either of them) and there are many things on a field that today’s under-30 quarterbacks can do that Brady could not do. Brady’s a seven-time Super Bowl winner because he saw more long-term value in becoming “the GOAT” than in simply cashing in as much as he could on his contracts next season.
He took less money. The Patriots were always good because they could pay more players. He’s now the most valuable former player in NFL history.
Can Darnold be convinced of a similar path after experiencing so many years of losing?
It’s not about whether he can ever be as good as Tom Brady (that ship may have sailed), it’s about whether Darnold can be the most valuable version of “Sam Darnold” that he could possibly be and will he prioritize team success over personal wealth? Maybe he shouldn’t do that for the team—it’s his life, I don’t fault players for their financial choices—but I’m just saying that’s what could determine his long-term future with the Seattle Seahawks.
Because John Schneider has done more to prove that he’ll trade a quarterback who wants a catastrophic raise than Darnold has done to prove that he can help Seattle become a dynasty at any cost.
Jalen Milroe was a longshot draft pick, but nonetheless is still the team’s highest-drafted quarterback since Wilson and their second-highest drafted in the last 20 years. A quarterback who was picked because of his potential to develop over 2-3 years (the same length as Darnold’s contract), not to compete for a job immediately.
That might never work out, it probably won’t, but just goes to prove that the Seahawks are always thinking ahead at the quarterback position with contingency plans and ways to save money relative to their rivals. It has helped Seattle reach the Super Bowl four times in the last 20 years.
As soon as a quarterbacks starts thinking that he’s too good for the Seahawks, the franchise gives him the opportunity to find out that he’s wrong.
Luckily for us, Sam Darnold said after the Super Bowl that there’s nowhere he’d rather be than Seattle. And I believe he was being genuine.
"The more things change, the more he stays the Sam"
How many times a post does KenJoe have a big smile when he's able to make a play on words ?
i'm taking the Over 2 and a half. ... 'n we enjoy them immensely.
My daughter has been steadily dating a guy for two years who has known Sam as a friend for many years. He tells me that who we see publicly is who he is personally.