You will never see another USC quarterback like Sam Darnold

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The Super Bowl kicks off at 3:30 PT with coverage on NBC starting at 10 AM.

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Robbie Ouzts is the only Seahawks player with an injury designation for the Super Bowl, listed as questionable with a neck injury. Everybody else from Sam Darnold to Nick Emmanwori was healthy enough by Saturday to not even warrant a mention of their status.

Ouzts was inactive against the Rams in the NFC Championship and played 10 snaps against the 49ers in the divisional round. Over 12 regular season games, Ouzts played 27% of the snaps that he was active for and touched the ball zero times with zero targets. So should Ouzts be inactive again, it’s uncertain if the team would even use a fullback as backup Brady Russell played just one offensive snap against the Rams.

However, if Ouzts is active, you best be damn sure that he’s playing and blocking for Kenneth Walker III.

On the elevations side, the Seahawks called up running backs Cam Akers and Velus Jones; Akers played one offensive snap against his former team in the last game and Jones was kept inactive. If you see either running back on Sunday, something either went horribly wrong or stupendously right for Seattle.

The Patriots have bigger injury concerns going into the game, although neither should necessarily change the outcome.

Robert Spillane, a key off-ball linebacker in New England’s defense, is questionable with an ankle injury but insists that he will play. Edge rusher Harold Landry, who led the Patriots with 8.5 sacks, is questionable with a knee injury that has caused him to go in and out of the lineup for the last six weeks.

It feels like the only loss Patriots fans are concerned about is Spillane and he says he’s going to play.

No excuses for either team going into the game: They’re both as healthy as any teams could dream to be in February.

Now what’s that about Sam Darnold?

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Darnold’s unique USC legacy now cemented

When Sam Darnold throws his sixth pass on Sunday, he will surpass the combined career Super Bowl attempts of every other USC quarterback in history. Pete Beathard threw five garbage time pass attempts for the Chiefs in Super Bowl I and since then no other USC quarterback has even played in the Super Bowl.

Until today.

It feels like what I’ve just said is impossible because USC is sometimes referred to as “QBU”. You have Pete Carroll to thank for that.

Carroll’s USC teams were so good that he fooled NFL teams into thinking that Trojans quarterbacks were already performing at a pro level while they were still in college.

Some people believe that the 2005 Rose Bowl is the greatest college football game of all-time, but the show stopped there for Heisman-winning quarterback Matt Leinart; Carroll urged Mark Sanchez to stay in school when he declared for the 2009 draft. He knew what would happen when he left the best thing that would ever happen to him; And yes Carson Palmer had a really good NFL career that was derailed by a knee injury, but it wasn’t until he got linked up with Carroll that he went from a “draft flier” to the consensus number one overall pick.

Similar to how we’d judge Russell Wilson’s career during and after his seasons with Pete Carroll, USC’s quarterbacks greatly benefited from a supporting cast, a run game, and a defense. (So why did things so go badly on the Raiders? Carroll has always been bad in his first season with a team.)

These are also all quarterback guardrails that Darnold never really had until the last two seasons with the Seahawks and Vikings and now he’s the first USC quarterback to appear in a Super Bowl in 60 years. Which is all the more compelling given that — as former teammate Max Browne told it this week — Darnold was “the lowest graded” USC quarterback recruit of the 21st century; so essentially since Carroll was hired.

Darnold was a late bloomer in high school, so the fact that he could lead USC to a Rose Bowl win over Penn State when he was only 19 further cements the premise that some people are just born for the position.

Like Caleb Williams, another “USC” quarterback, and also an example of how modern NCAA politics means that the days of any school being a “U” for any position are pretty much over.

Darnold chose to go to USC even though the odds would be stacked against him — as they would any other quarterback recruit to that school, but especially him as the lowest-rated of the bunch — and in under two years he proved to every coach, player, and himself that he was the best for the job.

Because he had to. There was no portal.

There was no such thing as an option to “just leave” if Darnold didn’t win the starting quarterback role as a true freshman. Or if another school just offered him more money.

Here’s a 2026 college quarterback who was just told this morning that he’s going to have to compete for the starting job in the spring:

Caleb Williams played for USC and he won a Heisman there, but there never had to be a leap of faith that it might not work out at USC. Because Williams was simply following his Oklahoma coach Lincoln Riley to SoCal when Riley got the job and wanted to bring his own quarterback with him.

I’m not criticizing Williams or other college quarterbacks for using the transfer portal system as it is intended to be used, and definitely not for taking millions of dollars to play “amateur” football. Have the changes impacted the quality of quarterbacks entering the NFL? It could be noteworthy that Darnold and Drake Maye both won the starting job as redshirt freshman at their original schools, entered the draft as soon as they were eligible, and both were picked third overall.

But Jalen Hurts won the Super Bowl last year and used eligibility rules to develop his resume as a transfer at Oklahoma in 2019.

Quarterbacks and coaches will adapt to the portal and NIL system, just as they have in the past when the rules have evolved, because they have no other choice. Football needs great quarterbacks in order to be the best sports spectacle in the country.

(Over 150 million people will watch today’s Super Bowl, but the World Cup and the Cricket World Cup can draw billions of viewers.)

However, the new system in place means that it doesn’t really matter what college you went to anymore because most quarterbacks have gone to at least two. Presumed number one pick Fernando Mendoza went to two. Last year’s number one pick went to three. In the 2024 class with six QBs in the top-12, only Drake Maye and J.J. McCarthy hadn’t transferred at least once.

Darnold could be the first USC quarterback to win the Super Bowl.

Without any sanctity for developing your talent at the school you picked out of high school anymore (and again, I’m not even saying that the “sanctity” is worth protecting), Darnold could also be the only USC quarterback to ever win the Super Bowl.

There was definitely a huge advantage to playing for Pete Carroll, either in college or the NFL. Perhaps there’s also something to be said for the quarterback who went to Pete’s teams after he left.

Is Andrew Janocko leaving too?

Klint Kubiak is going to be the Raiders head coach as soon as tonight and Jeremy Fowler threw quarterbacks coach Andrew Janocko as a name to watch as his first OC in Las Vegas. Let me just get this out immediately:

There is a huge difference between being wanted and being worthy.

If the Seahawks think Janocko is worthy, they have a great pitch for him to stay and be the next OC. If Janocko leaves with Kubiak, maybe Seattle didn’t think he was worthy. We don’t have to worry about certain assistants leaving just because they’re leaving.

Let’s not forget that Kubiak, and anyone following Kubiak, is going from a Super Bowl team to the worst team in the league.

The Seahawks are in a far better position to develop talented assistant coaches into coordinators and head coaches than the Raiders are. That’s how Sean McVay has become a head coach factory with the Rams. It’s not that McVay is a magic leader, it’s that he recruits the best coaches because he has the most coveted assistant jobs.

The goal for Macdonald is not to hope to get lucky every time a coach leaves Seattle. It’s to be attractive for all the coaches who want to come to Seattle.

Let’s find out after this week how “hot” the Seahawks are now.

By the way, shoutout to Seaside Joe community member Dale and everybody else Down Under: Michael Dickson could join Jordan Mailata as the only Australian-born players to play in and win a Super Bowl. That would mean that the Super Bowl had 0 Australian winners in 58 years and now they could do it back-to-back.

(Coincidentally Jesse Williams was the first to earn a Super Bowl ring when he was with the Seahawks in 2013, but he didn’t play.)

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