We’re less than a week away from the start of the 2026 NFL season, and despite what the likes of Ephraim Salaam might believe, the Seattle Seahawks—not the Los Angeles Rams—are indeed the reigning Super Bowl champions.
The Rams are Super Bowl favorites
this year for perfectly understandable reasons. A team that narrowly missed out on the Super Bowl with an MVP quarterback just added the literal Defensive Player of the Year, a very good cornerback, and lost no one of real consequence in free agency. Jared Verse was their biggest loss and they replaced him with, to repeat, the literal Defensive Player of the Year. Oh yeah, and Aaron Donald is back.
But the Seahawks, despite being among the betting favorites to win it all this year, have been treated as somewhat of an afterthought even outside of the Rams’ typically splashy offseason. Have a look at the Super Bowl 61 predictions on NFL.com and the Seahawks are nowhere to be found. I imagine when more predictions roll out, the Seahawks will not be in the mix for selection despite having among the best odds to at least make it back.
Maybe it’s because the Seahawks came out of nowhere last year when preseason expectations were, at best, a playoff berth. Or maybe it’s because betting on a repeat has largely proven to be a poor gamble. While I believe some of the perceived slights are overblown and that there are still a few public faces who are supportive of the Seahawks, like FS1’s Danny Parkins and NFL Network’s Kyle Brandt…
…There is no getting around the why Seattle is not considered a prime pick to pull off a repeat.
It’s Sam Darnold.
This is a quarterback-driven league and quarterbacks drive more obnoxious discourse than any other position in North American sports. Sam Darnold spent a good chunk of his career being a punchline for his ill-fated stint with the New York Jets. His career revival with the Minnesota Vikings was an amazing story until he crashed without a parachute in his final two games.
When the Seahawks signed Darnold in free agency, that moved the national needle not a jot. Was it fair to be skeptical that Darnold was a one-year wonder under a highly respected offensive mind in Kevin O’Connell? Absolutely. We’ve seen one-off great quarterback seasons and then nothing else of consequence afterward.
But Darnold didn’t prove to be a one-year wonder. He might not have put up the gaudy stats like he did in Minnesota, but he played like an above-average quarterback who didn’t drag a talented roster down and at times (like the NFC Championship) elevated his game when the team needed him most. Two very good seasons with two different organizations is enough for any sensible person to think that this version of Darnold is sustainable and not a fluke.
And yet, the “yeah, buts” remain.
“Yeah, but Darnold still led the league in turnovers.” (While having a high passing efficiency)
“Yeah, but Darnold had an elite defense.” (So did C.J. Stroud, but he actively threw away a playoff game in a half)
“Yeah, but Darnold doesn’t have his Super Bowl MVP running back anymore.” (Many of his best games were with an ineffective run game)
“Yeah, but Darnold lost his offensive coordinator.” (We’re TBD on Brian Fleury, but I don’t think he’ll collapse without Klint Kubiak)
Darnold’s struggles early in his career may be behind him, but the perception may be unshakeable unless he transforms into an MVP caliber quarterback, which I’m not sure he’ll attain (at least not in a low-volume passing offense). Even if the best is yet to come for Sam, I don’t really care if he never becomes MVP great, especially after we obsessed way too much about it in the last couple of good Russell Wilson seasons.
If someone on a rookie contract had Darnold’s productivity and wins over the past two seasons, they’d be projected as a future superstar. But it’s Sam Darnold, so there’s almost an expectation that he’s going to be seeing ghosts again. I’d argue that if you hypothetically swapped out Darnold for a widely considered superior quarterback (e.g. Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Jordan Love) then the Seahawks would probably remain favorites or at least be level with the Rams.
We’ve sort of been here before when the Seahawks were last champions. The Legion of Boom and Marshawn Lynch took the plaudits, while Russell Wilson was somewhat patronizingly referred to as a “game manager.” Don’t believe me? Have a sampling of these headlines from either side of Super Bowl 48…
Russ might have had his own disrespect at the time when he was compared to Andrew Luck, Colin Kaepernick, and Cam Newton and looked upon as good, but not as good as any of them. But even the biggest Wilson skeptics acknowledged he was a dynamic play-maker who kept turnovers to a minimum and made clutch plays when he needed to. The underlying point, however, is that Wilson was getting compared to QBs who were considered to among the best, and it also did not stop national media from picking the Seahawks to at least get to Super Bowl 49.
The framing of Darnold is generally that of a two-hit wonder who might still not even be a good quarterback, almost as if to suggest he played almost no meaningful role in consecutive 14-win seasons and a Super Bowl win. I loath to include his hot takes in this piece, but this doozy from Jason McIntyre just last week is one to behold.
Trent Dilfer averaged under 10 passes completed per game during the Baltimore Ravens’ four playoff games. He famously won a game in which the Ravens had six total first downs and he went 5/16 for 117 yards. When he was with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he once lost a home game by committing four turnovers despite the Buccaneers defense holding the New York Giants to no offensive touchdowns and FOUR first downs. McIntyre spews out molten lava takes for fun on Fox Sports on a weekly basis, but the concept of Darnold even being talked about this way after the past two seasons is ignorance, stupidity, and the unwillingness to evolve original opinions.
I was very much on the wagon of making fun of Darnold, even through some of his bad moments in Minnesota, but the Vikings stint at least upgraded my opinion of Sam to lukewarm. Between his attitude, his tangible on-field improvements, and winning a Super Bowl, I’ve flipped my opinion on Sam for the better. It is okay if your initial or longstanding opinion on a player changes in the face of new information, as opposed to being stubborn about your priors.
Of course, it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that winning a Super Bowl is hard, winning back-to-back is very hard, and pulling off a Super Bowl repeat with non-Hall of Fame caliber quarterback has never happened. Bart Starr, Terry Bradshaw, Bob Griese, Joe Montana, John Elway, Tom Brady, and Patrick Mahomes are all in or will be in Canton one day. Sam Darnold will not unless he sustains or improves upon this level of play for another several seasons, and that’s a level of projection that’s too far out for me to care.
There’s also no way around the fact that at least 70 percent Super Bowl champions have been led by consensus all-time great quarterbacks, and the likes of Brad Johnson and Mark Rypien tend to be rarer. But at some point, maybe it can be done the Seahawks way? The more well-balanced a team is, the less dependent they are on their quarterback.
To believe in the Seahawks to repeat is to at least partially believe in Sam Darnold, which national media largely does not. If Seattle runs it forward and gets another ring, then that’s the ultimate silencer. If it doesn’t end in another Lombardi Trophy and the outside voices do their victory laps, I think I’m still going to sleep easy knowing the Seahawks believed in Sam and got one more title than most thought was ever possible.
