Is this Sam Darnold’s year?
On the final day of the 2025 regular season, Darnold erased the bitter loss he and his team, at the time the Minnesota Vikings, suffered the season before when their last game of the year ended in a defeat that dropped them from a top seed in the playoffs to the fifth slot. This season, Darnold led the Seattle Seahawks to exactly the same spot, a top seed or fifth seed playoff seeding based on the final day of the regular season result.
He lost to the Detroit Lions on the road two years ago and beat the San Francisco 49ers on the road this year. The victory was the 14th for the Seahawks this season, matching the 14 he won with Minnesota in 2024, and elevating him to the second player in NFL history to win 28 regular season games in consecutive years. Tom Brady did that with the New England Patriots in 2003 and 2004 and went on to win the Super Bowl in both seasons. For the record, Brady accomplished the feat in a pair of 16 game seasons, while Darnold was 14-3 twice after the season was raised from 16 to 17 games.
Still, something has to be said for a quarterback that did it in consecutive years with different teams. It might also be worth noting that in the year before Darnold arrived in Seattle the Seahawks won 10 games, and the year after he left Minnesota, the Vikings notched 9 victories.
In 2024, Darnold opened the playoffs on the road against the Los Angeles Rams, and his Vikings squad got whipped. This year, he opened the Seahawks postseason at home and crushed the 49ers.
If you are following this pattern, you like Darnold’s chances on Sunday when he leads Seattle into battle against Matthew Stafford and his Rams at Lumen Field.
The journey to the NFC’s Championship Game has been fraught with detours for the first round and overall third player taken by the New York Jets in 2018 NFL draft. He spent his first three professional seasons with the Jets, three years that resulted in a combined 13 wins and 25 losses as the New York starter. Two campaigns in Carolina followed, and once again his results as a starting NFL quarterback showed little promise while compiling an 8 and 9 record in 17 starts.
March has been a big month for Darnold over the past three years. In 2023, he signed a free agent contract with the San Francisco 49ers and was a backup on a Niners team that advanced to the Super Bowl, which resulted in an overtime loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. In 2024, he signed a free agent contract with the Minnesota Vikings, thinking another backup role was in place after the Vikings had spent their first-round draft selection on quarterback J.J. McCarthy.
But the backup plans got shifted to a starting role when McCarthy was lost for the season after suffering an injury early in the preseason.
Darnold didn’t miss his chance as a starter in Minnesota. Leading the Vikings to their second most regular season wins in franchise history. His success priced him out of the market for the Vikings, who had already committed too much money to McCarthy to afford the price Darnold now warranted as a successful NFL franchise quarterback.
Still, despite his great campaign last season, there were critics that thought his one great season after six nondescript years in the NFL, was not ample reason to think he was truly a franchise QB.
Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald was not among the disbelievers. On March 13, 2025, the Seahawks traded Geno Smith to the Las Vegas Raiders for a third-round pick and on the same day signed Darnold to a three-years 100-million-dollar contract.
Darnold has shown this season that 2024 was no fluke … he’s the real deal.
All that remains now is for him to go back to the Super Bowl, this time as a starter, and win it. That path would include a victory on Sunday over the Rams.