As Seahawks fans — and perhaps even the team itself — weigh the merits of a quarterback controversy in Seattle, it’s worth by starting with a simple question: Who are the best and worst starting quarterbacks right now and where does Sam Darnold fit into that conversation?
A topic like this one is in the back of our minds all the time, isn’t it? But we almost never directly address it. Can we even answer it?
Do we know the top 5 quarterbacks?
The concept of a “top 5” or “top 10” quarterback gets thrown around a lot, but I don’t think the real question to answer is “Who?” … I think it’s “When?”
Every quarterback has bad games and bad months. Most have bad seasons. During Russell Wilson’s most productive season in 2015, he had 10 touchdowns and seven interceptions through nine games—but then Wilson had 24 touchdowns and one interception in the final seven games. Cam Newton won MVP that season by throwing 20 touchdowns and one interception over his final seven games.
Were Wilson and Newton top 5 quarterbacks in the first half of the season when their numbers were unimpressive? Or only in the second half when they were actually unstoppable?
If you’re a top 5 quarterback in December, were you a top 5 quarterback in September and your numbers just didn’t reflect it yet? Or is the position just that streaky that sometimes you’ve got it and sometimes you don’t?
Is Caleb Williams top 5?
A lot of people are assuming that the Seahawks just lost to a quarterback on Monday night who is ascending into the top 5 because the Bears are winning, he doesn’t turn the ball over, and “he’s Caleb Williams”. Is that true? It might be. How can we know for sure?
Before we get to stats, I thought this film study of Williams by “Money Where the Film Is” was interesting—and more importantly it was honest:
Williams is being praised for throwing 247 yards one touchdown against the Seahawks on 34 throws, which is fair but … The scary thing is that IF Williams took some of the wide open deep shots and actually saw the whole field he could have easily had over 400 yards and multiple scores. There are many times on film when Williams is either inaccurate past 10 yards or takes a checkdown over a wide open receiver that he should be able to see; and even if that was Ben Johnson’s gameplan to slow down the offense, it’s not great to see this many open receivers against the Seahawks secondary.
As I wrote before the game, Williams is the one of the most risk averse quarterbacks in the NFL, as 73% of his attempts are short passes and even if you DOUBLED his number of attempts past 10 yards he still wouldn’t rank in the top 10. That doesn’t make him bad, it just means that this is all we have to go on: A 25 year old former number one pick who takes fewer intermediate pass attempts than current Aaron Rodgers. His passing chart against Seattle:
0-of-4 on his four longest attempts, 6-of-13 beyond 10 yards, 18-of-21 on short throws.
Past 10 yards, Williams was 6/13, 125 yards, whereas Sam Darnold was 7/13 for 112 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT. On these passes past 10 yards, Darnold ranked higher than Williams in every stat and they were both pressured 38.5% of the time—It was actually short throws that threw off Darnold, as he went 10/21 with an interception. This is obviously terrible, but we have to give context to the pick:
It’s 3rd-and-7, Seattle’s down 10 points with under 6 minutes left, everybody is covered and Darnold can’t take a sack or throw it away. He moves up in the pocket, as he should, and finds a wide open A.J. Barner for a would-be first down. However the ball is batted down and directly into the arms of a Bears player. I’d call it plus pocket movement, questionable decision to try and throw it through a player, and bad luck.
Darnold makes the hard look easy and the easy look hard. It’s not ideal, it may eventually not be acceptable, but let’s not be quick to throw everything out with a quarterback who may be a far better passer beyond 10 yards than “top 5 Caleb Williams”. Which brings me back to the premise.
A top 5 top 5
Let’s start by making a longer list of quarterbacks who are top 5 somewhere.
Top 5 Passer Rating:
Trevor Lawrence, 112.6
Joe Burrow, 111.6
Brock Purdy, 110.1
Jared Goff, 110
Caleb Williams, 104.6
Three things about this group that immediately feel wrong to me is a) It’s passer rating, b) Goff is on it, and c) Williams has only played five games. Williams has as many pass attempts this season as Jameis Winston. Tanner McKee almost has as many attempts as Williams.
Obviously a great quarterback can miss games too, it’s just that Williams hasn’t taken as much risk as other quarterbacks. It’s sort of like saying that the director of 2026’s biggest hit Obsession (Curry Barker) is a better horror movie director than John Carpenter because Carpenter has made some duds. Well, Barker is only 26, give him time. He has a “Ghosts of Mars” in him.
*I actually like Ghosts of Mars, it’s campy and re-watchable.
/Me when someone says the Seahawks are a one-year wonder:
Top 5 EPA per Dropback:
Josh Allen
Purdy
Caleb
Lawrence
Goff
For the analytics fans who prefer EPA, Allen climbs from eighth in passer rating to first here. Another interesting placement is Kirk Cousins, who ranks seventh. Speaking of Cousins, what about pure volume passers?
Top 5 Passing Yards:
Jordan Love, 2,246 yards, 16 TD/6 INT
Matthew Stafford, 2,146 yards, 15 TD/8 INT
Cousins, 2,124 yards, 19 TD/5 INT
Burrow, 2,115 yards, 20 TD/6 INT
Dak Prescott, 2,046 yards, 14 TD/5 INT
Burrow leads the NFL in yards per game (302.1), completion percentage (73%) TDs (20) and his TD rate (7.5) is twice as high as Caleb’s (3.8). But he has also played with Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins for seven years each. That’s noteworthy, right? Nobody else in football has had that long to develop chemistry with two number one receivers.
What about net yards per pass attempt? The ability to consistently throw the ball to the sticks and avoid negative plays.
Top 5 NY/A:
Allen, 7.9
Purdy, 7.8
Drake Maye, 7.6
Lawrence, 7.5
Patrick Mahomes, 7.2
A quarterback’s reputation is also weighed heavily in rankings and nobody has done more to earn respect over the past 10 years than Mahomes. Maye went to the Super Bowl, almost won MVP, and over his last four games he’s been the most productive QB in the NFL (14 TD, 2 INT, 3 rush TD, 122.2 rating).
And then there are those who just want to see Darnold turn off the interception faucet. Who protects the football the best?
Top 5 INT rate
Jayden Daniels, 0%
Goff, 0.4%
C.J. Stroud, 0.4%
Williams, 0.6%
Bo Nix and Deshaun Watson, tied at 1.2%
If you were only concerned with stats and efficiency, Stroud’s 11 TD/1 INT, 100.7 rating would look great. (I think watching him actually play and be consistent is far more frustrating for Texans fans.)
So who is top 5?
All I’ve done is make five top five lists and yet I’ve named 16 quarterbacks. A “top 5 QB” by one measure could be an average or below-average QB by most others. And even Geno Smith is sixth in passer rating!
Now we can mostly agree that Smith and some of these other names are not actually top 5 to most people: Watson, Nix, Daniels, and Cousins to name a few. Despite Cousins being on pace for 40 touchdowns, every week he’s fighting off calls — by Raiders fans — to bench him for Fernando Mendoza.
Point being: There is no top 5. The “top 5” is at least 12 QBs who are in the conversation somewhere. QBs who you might think are in a “everyone’s top 5” probably aren’t. And some QBs who would “never” make “that awful throw” actually make mistakes all the time. For example:
5 Worst INT rates
Justin Herbert, 4.7%
Sam Darnold, 4.3%
Drake Maye, 3.4%
Daniel Jones, 3.4%
Jameis Winston, 3.2%
Herbert has been a consistent “top 10” QB since he was drafted in 2020 but now he leads the league in interceptions. Maye had an INT rate of 7.5% in the first three games. Darnold has thrown nine picks, Maye has thrown eight. So has Stafford. Burrow and Love have thrown six.
Darnold has the second-worst interception rate, but this chart shows that he only has the 13th-worst turnover-worthy play percentage:
If these numbers are true, Darnold has thrown fewer turnover-worthy passes than Lawrence, Allen, Love, Nix, and Baker Mayfield, among others.
Is it hard to believe? Historically, Allen has thrown a lot of picks. Mayfield led the league in picks two years ago. It’s not the picks that concern me.
As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, Darnold’s interceptions would be acceptable if the Seahawks scored more points. Over the last four games, Darnold has thrown four touchdowns. In the same period of time, Jason Myers has attempted 10 field goals under 50 yards. If the Seahawks had scored touchdowns on 40% of those drives, would Seattle be 6-2?
If Darnold had 14 touchdowns and 65% completions instead of 10 touchdowns and 60% completions, he’d basically have the same passing stats as Love, Stafford, and Maye. Three of the 12 “top 5” quarterbacks.
The interceptions only matter when the margins are this thin. The Seahawks didn’t lose to the Bears because Darnold threw an interception—they were already losing 27-17. They lost because they didn’t move the ball on five of their first seven drives and then Myers missed a field goal:
Special teams was awful all night, except for Michael Dickson.
Darnold is the quarterback, so responsibility is always on him. Still, context:
1st drive: Laser to Tory Horton on third down is whacked out by defender
2nd drive: Scramble on third down, head/neck hit could’ve been a penalty
3rd drive: Reach the red zone, second down pass to Zach Charbonnet loses six yards (was that a great play call?)
4th drive: Jadarian Price runs twice and gains two yards, setting up third and 8
7th drive: Darnold sacked on second down
8th drive: Perfect pass to JSN at goal line gets questionable OPI call
If the Seahawks put in Drew Lock, I hope he gets better protection and play calling, is complemented with an efficient run game, gets more help from receivers, and JSN isn’t called for phantom offensive pass interference. At worst, I think Seattle was robbed of first-and-goal that likely leads to a touchdown—and if the Seahawks score 10 more points over the course of the game, this offense isn’t in nearly as much trouble as we think.
Is it a “top 5” offense? Definitely not. Is Darnold a “top 5” quarterback? Right now I couldn’t even get him into the top 20, so no.
But could they and he be the top 5’s ‘top 15’ that could be top 10 soon? Potentially. Sometimes you have the right who, but are stuck in the wrong when.
So I’ll comment because I can. For the last 2 days the Substack app wouldn’t let me comment, and customer support is now a shitty AI system. Anyhoo…
I’ve been very supportive of Brian Fleury because I’m intrigued by his background and thought he could be really good. But damn, some of the play calling was bizarre.
And this may be an unpopular opinion but destroying the continuity on the offensive line really hurt the team against Chicago. Maybe Nelson is an Oline god, but he hid it well. And Zabel looked lost on the right. Absolutely lost.
Lucas looked a whole lot better 1 week before when he had Bradford next to him. Last Sunday reaffirmed my belief that Oline continuity trumps better talent that hasn’t played together much.
Maybe late this season or next season I’ll be singing the praises of this trade. But for now, I think it’s made the Seahawks offense worse.
Monday’s game was the first time I really had an issue with Fleury’s play calling. We started a drive at 8:40 left in the 4th quarter down 10. A TD and a FG from tying the game. You have a great shot at two drives to get that done. At the end of the first half the Hawks got the ball with 58 seconds left and 2 time outs. They drove the length of the field for a TD, still had their time outs and left 20 seconds on the clock. Before Darnold threw the INT on that 4th quarter drive they moved the ball 13 yards in 5 plays, (two running plays in there) and took over 2 minutes off the clock. They huddled after every play. They bled the play clock down to single digits with the game clock running. They were on pace to run out of time before they scored on what would be the only drive left in the game.
I didn’t expect them to move it with the speed they did at the end of the first half, but that pace was unacceptable and that I can say is 95% on Fleury. As for Sam, I know not all the turnovers are on him and he has been much better not fumbling the ball this year, but the stats on the Seahawks performance when they have 1 or fewer turnovers vs 2 or more is incontrovertible. In his last 13 starts (including the PATS game in week one as a “start”) where he played a full game, Lock has 7 turnovers. His turnover rate is less than 1/2 of Sam’s rate. MM has said many times protecting the ball is an integral part of complementary offense. Playoff Sam has to get his mojo back, beginning this week. The O-line was a mess vs the Bears. People are over-reacting IMHO based on the Bears game. It was bound to take some time for Jones, Nelson and Zabel to figure it out, and for Sundell and Lucas to mesh with new players. Hopefully it will start this week. It should look better anyway.
Also re- Sam, his ceiling is definitely top 5. No doubt he’s capable of 375+ yards and 4 TDs. But the turnovers kill us. Lock is not going to match Sam’s ceiling, but with this Seahawk defense, 225 yards from Lock and 2 TDS without or at most 1 turnover is complementary football. Sam is the QB Seattle wants, but Lock may be the QB they need to stack wins and play complementary football. We’re still in the thick of the playoff hunt, but if we lose to the Cardinals and Raiders, I want to see what we have in Lock. With this defense we don’t need a top 5 QB. Top 12 will work fine. And let’s not forget Lock was top 1 after 2 weeks. Yeah it’s a small sample size, but Lock had pressure, stood in there with his feet planted, and threw the ball taking the hit. Sam is bouncing and he’s not planting his feet. Even before the pressure arrives on some plays… as if he’s seeing ghost pressure. Settle down Sam!