SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — San Darnold's NFL career had hit rock bottom when he arrived in San Francisco in 2023 after failing at two spots to live up to his high draft billing.
Less than three years later, he's ready to step on football's biggest stage as the starting quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl on Sunday.
“I always believed in myself,” Darnold said. “I knew that I could do this at a high level, and that was really it. That’s
what kept me going and I knew at some point an opportunity would arise. But even if it didn’t, I knew I did everything that I can to become a better player year in and year out.”
Darnold's journey from draft bust to Super Bowl quarterback is a remarkable one and it began during his one year with the San Francisco 49ers in 2023, when he started only one game and threw only 46 passes.
That season ended in a trip to the Super Bowl, where the 49ers lost 25-22 in overtime to Kansas City, when he was a backup generating little interest instead of one of the game's biggest stars at a podium answering questions from throngs of reporters.
“I was somewhere over there, standing, hoping people would talk to me,” he said at Super Bowl Opening Night on Monday. “Now I’m here.”
How he got here, where he will be dressing for the Super Bowl in the same locker room at Levi's Stadium where he spent the 2023 season as a backup, is a tale of perseverance.
Darnold came into the NFL as the third-overall pick of the New York Jets in 2018 following a stellar college career at Southern California, but he struggled from the start.
He had a 13-25 record and a 78.6 passer rating — the second worst in the league among 43 quarterbacks with at least 15 starts from 2018-20 — and became the butt of jokes when a microphone caught him saying he was “seeing ghosts” during a particularly bad performance in a prime-time loss to New England in 2019.
The Jets unloaded him to Carolina after the 2020 season and Darnold wasn't any better in two seasons shuttling in and out of the lineup with the Panthers as he posted a 77.3 passer rating in 18 games.
That led Darnold to take a backup contract in free agency with the 49ers at $4.5 million for the 2023 season. He wanted to immerse himself in coach Kyle Shanahan's offense that has become so popular in the league.
“It was great to play in Kyle’s system, to have Kyle as a coach, to hear him talk about football during OTAs and training camp, when we had a ton of time to talk to him as a quarterback,” Darnold said. “I soaked all those moments in to just be able to learn as much as I could, just because I felt like he talked about football in a way that I had really never heard before so that was really special for me.”
Darnold beat out Trey Lance to be the backup to Brock Purdy, whose path was in complete contrast to Darnold's. Purdy entered the league in 2022 as the last pick in the draft and became an MVP finalist in the 2023 season.
Darnold said he learned so much from watching Purdy practice and prepare and from quarterbacks coach Brian Griese, who had played 11 seasons in the NFL.
But even though he wasn't playing, the physical gifts that made Darnold the No. 3 pick were evident.
“He was at a point of his career where he was at a crossroads,” said Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, who was the passing game coordinator in San Francisco in 2023. “He came into that role as Brock Purdy’s backup. He was not a guy that was looking to jump in and take Brock’s spot. He was supporting our quarterback. And all the while, you could see just the talent that he had and how he grew that season. Brian Griese was a phenomenal coach and continued to develop him. Then when he got his chance he was ready.”
That happened the next season when Darnold won 14 games as a starter in Minnesota before flaming out in the playoffs. The Vikings then moved on and let him leave in free agency and he came to Seattle to reunite with Kubiak.
Darnold led the Seahawks to 14 wins this season — joining Tom Brady as the only quarterbacks with back-to-back seasons with at least 14 wins — and now is in the Super Bowl.
“We were really fortunate to get him,” Kubiak said. “When he came to us, he was just so much more of a mature player. He had a lot of scars and he used those scars to make himself a better player. So we just got him in the perfect time of his career when he was hungry as he could be. He took all the experience that he had and helped lead our offense.”
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