Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold is a Super Bowl champion who played an important part in bringing another Lombardi Trophy to Seattle, and that can never be taken away.
Sam Darnold is also playing bad football.
You can blame the offensive coordinator, you can blame the offensive line, you can blame the lack of a running game, but Sam Darnold is playing bottom-tier football. His worst throw from Monday night’s blowout loss against the Chicago Bears didn’t even count, but it’s emblematic of his
incomprehensible decision-making.
Incidentally, the play design is pretty much DOA but there is no need to turn 2nd and 1 into a double coverage gamble.
Darnold’s touchdown-to-interception ratio is barely 1:1 over his last 16 regular season starts. His mostly great playoff run is the break-up in what is otherwise a prolonged stretch of play that is far removed from much of his 2024 Minnesota Vikings season and the first 10-ish games of his Seahawks career.
(Editor’s note: It’s 344/551 and not 334)
There are no advanced stats that can positively spin Darnold as an above-average starter at the moment. He really wasn’t playing particularly well for most of the back-end of 2025, but the running game finally sprung to life and Seattle’s defense and special teams repeatedly either scored or gave the Seahawks extremely short fields.
The 2026 Seahawks are 4-4, which is not the end of the world, but how they’ve gotten to 4-4 is pretty much the worst case scenario in the short- and long-term. If Mike Macdonald’s defense hypothetically had curiously dropped off to be a middling group and the Seahawks were losing shootouts while Darnold was putting up impressive numbers, I think we could live with that and acknowledge that defenses can be more volatile year-to-year than offenses. Darnold is heavily culpable for at least three of the four defeats, and even his best game against the Washington Commanders is significantly impacted by what was effectively a game-losing pick-six.
Darnold’s contract is a great mid-level contract for someone with his track record and roughly two seasons worth of good productivity. It’s also a contract that expires in 2027, and the current version of Darnold does not look like someone who should be Seattle’s Week 1 starter, much less the starter in 2028.
Barring substantial improvement over the second half of the season, John Schneider has a major decision to make on Darnold, regardless of whether or not Brian Fleury is still the offensive coordinator. We’ve seen Darnold be very good when paired with the right play-caller. But Darnold is in that tier of quarterback who needs way more help to be functional than the likes of Josh Allen or Joe Burrow or Patrick Mahomes. Every quarterback needs at least some semblance of foundational support to succeed, but Sam needs way more stuff than, say, prime Russell Wilson. That includes, seemingly above all else, having an experienced and effective play-caller who can play to his strengths and minimize his worst habits. Brian Fleury does not seem to fit the bill.
Darnold also needs play-action to work like we need air to breathe. When it’s not working, Darnold has consistently been anywhere from average to ruinous in pure dropback situations. He needs an offensive line to protect him so well that his pressure rate is low, otherwise this is what you get.
Darnold with a clean pocket and/or the ability to get the ball out of his hands quickly can sling it with the best of them. When he is dealing with pressure in his face, he is barely a starting caliber quarterback. We have two years of evidence in a Seahawks uniform.
In effect, Sam Darnold needs:
- Play-action to be so insanely efficient that it overrides the lack of non-PA success.
- Favorable game scripts such that his team is almost never trailing.
- Related: A top-5 caliber defense such that his team is rarely trailing.
- An offensive coordinator/play-caller who can scheme up easy-button throws for fun.
- Related: A cheat code for a WR1.
- An offensive line that can pass protect competently.
- An explosive running game in case none of the above works out or is figured out by NFL defenses.
To which I echo the thoughts of Carter:
There’s nothing wrong with building a great environment around a competent but limited quarterback, but that also means a crevice turns into the Grand Canyon when said environment is even marginally worse. You can live with Darnold’s turnovers if he’s as efficient as he was in 2024 and 2025. That is not even close to what we’re seeing in 2026.
The possibility also cannot be discounted that two years of film effectively exhausted all of the routes that the likes of Kevin O’Connell and Klint Kubiak could make Darnold thrive. As I wrote not too long ago, “With non-elite quarterbacks there are only so many levers you can pull before competent defenses respond.” If Seattle sticks with Sam then it will likely need an(other) offensive coordinator to get him back on track, all while not being an immediate head coach candidate. This is the downside of having a defensive minded coach and your OC hires are either bad (see: Grubb, Ryan) or are so good that NFL teams take notice (see: Kubiak, Klint). The churn truly never stops unless you find that unicorn who can be a stable part of your organization while being no threat to hold a head coaching job.
Seattle’s roster as a whole is a very good one; most of the players from last year’s Super Bowl squad are still here. Any premise of Seattle having a sustained window of playoff and Super Bowl contention was contingent upon Darnold sustaining his success and mercifully giving us all a break from debating Seattle’s next franchise quarterback. If Darnold cannot recapture even half of what made him go from draft bust to unlikely Super Bowl champion—this includes the rest of this year and (if applicable) his contract year in 2027—the Seahawks’ long-term vision is suddenly a lot more complicated. Drew Lock is a free agent and frankly I don’t want to bank on the QB revival thing yet again for a career backup entering Year 9. It’s not like Drew himself hasn’t had a history of being turnover prone with volatile week-to-week performances when he was a starter elsewhere. Jalen Milroe is a great unknown outside of preseason, and 2027 is a pivotal year for him to see if he’s even ready to be an NFL starter. Other than that? Seattle might find itself once again dealing with major uncertainty at the most important position in the sport.
That’s what stings the most, even coming off an unforgettable Super Bowl season. The Seahawks have their head coach, have a lot of hyper-talented, young core pieces under contract either on rookie deals or massive extensions, but quarterback has become a giant question mark now and therefore makes for a much murkier future than hoped.
