Seahawks’ Sam Darnold finds stability in Seattle

Published 8:50 am Tuesday, August 11, 2026

RENTON — Sam Darnold looks at home.

Relaxed in a chair inside the Seattle Seahawks’ Virginia Mason Athletic Center, about an hour after his latest surgical performance at training camp, Darnold emitted an air of appreciation for all he’s conquered and endured while also poignantly recognizing the top of the mountain is never within reach.

Darnold, now a Super Bowl champion who helped orchestrate the Seahawks’ first championship run in a dozen years, shrugs off the idea that this was the culmination of his journey. Just 29 years old, the No. 3 pick of the 2018 NFL Draft likely isn’t even halfway through his career. And for a quarterback whose trajectory appeared to be completely derailed on several occasions, Darnold has seen far too much to take a day or even a moment for granted.

“A lot of people ask me,” Darnold recently told The Athletic, “like, ‘Come on, man. We’ve heard you say stuff about how you’re just taking it one day at a time, but you’ve got to have certain feelings about certain places you’ve been.’ But it doesn’t do me any good to have that mindset. Even if I did have certain thoughts about certain places, that doesn’t do me any good to air that out.

“Even for myself, when I’m home with my wife, I don’t like talking about things that happened three or four years ago. It’s just like, what are we doing? You know what I mean? That’s just holding onto something that has no meaning. I hold onto the lessons I learned during that time, but it’s just a waste of brain space to think about stuff like that.”

Darnold’s offseason energy was instead devoted to a litany of healthier activities, like exploring Seattle’s touristy attractions and building a community among friends in the area. And while he laughed at the thought, it’s always a fun accomplishment to ditch Apple Maps on the way to work.

Last year, for instance, Darnold and his new wife, Katie, were seemingly perpetually packing and unpacking for weddings. And when they did have downtime at their new house in Seattle, they were building furniture or unpacking — and really, Darnold had become an expert in that area.

“Living in the same area, having that stability, that’s been amazing,” Darnold said. “In terms of being able to stay in one place because I have been — ‘journeyman’ may be a loose term — but I’ve been a journeyman for the last maybe three or four years. It’s been amazing to be able to stay here for this upcoming year and have a stable home instead of just bouncing from apartment to apartment. It can be so tough, and I lived that life for three years. It’s very nice to have a stable home.”

After his first three seasons with the New York Jets, who haven’t made the playoffs since 2010, Darnold was flipped to the Carolina Panthers for a trio of draft picks. But the Panthers were mired in their own organizational crisis, failing to make it work with a QB depth chart that also included Baker Mayfield, and Darnold’s career continued to toil.

Darnold opted for the understudy route with San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan in 2023. The QB was there in the short term to support starter Brock Purdy and in the long term to soak up as much knowledge from one of the NFL’s premier teachers. Darnold cashed in that experience in 2024 for a spot in Kevin O’Connell’s school of quarterbacking with the Minnesota Vikings, who also traded up in the first round for QB J.J. McCarthy. Darnold signed a $10 million deal, so he was also going to have to overcome the organization’s investment in the rookie.

Darnold outlasted McCarthy, who needed meniscus surgery in camp, and transformed his career in a borderline unpredictable fashion. He set career highs with 4,319 passing yards and 35 touchdowns, and his 66.2 completion percentage was his best until he topped it (67.7) in 2025. The Vikings won 14 games and played for the NFC’s No. 1 seed in the season finale before their offensive line wore down, Darnold took a pummeling, and they succumbed unceremoniously in back-to-back games.

The Seahawks certainly didn’t lose faith in Darnold because of the way it ended and swooped in with a three-year, $100.5 million contract in free agency. Though the Seahawks had been disciplined in their quarterback pursuit in recent years, bypassing the idea of aggressively trading up in the draft, they had to pivot in 2025 when Geno Smith wanted too much money. Even so, Darnold still signed a prove-it deal relative to the influx of booming contracts around the league.

Ultimately, Darnold was one of the league’s greatest bargains. And sometime following the season, Darnold and the Seahawks are likely going to address the idea of an extension.

Is Seattle where Darnold would like to finish his career?

“That’s always the dream, right?” Darnold said. “But you just never know what’s going to happen. That’s why, for my entire career, I’ve treated everything — I would say one year at a time, but it’s really one day at a time. I don’t look past today. We’ve got to crush tonight’s meetings. And tonight, I’m going to look at tomorrow’s script and make sure I’m ready for tomorrow’s practice.

“I just do everything I can to be the best quarterback for this team as long as I’m the quarterback and just go from there.”

Darnold’s task-focused mentality meshes nicely with coach Mike Macdonald, who masterfully blends his guidance of the overall team mission with his ability to get into the nitty-gritty with crucial details.

Last season, for instance, Darnold delivered in the clutch over and again, notably with an incredible comeback in Week 16 against the Los Angeles Rams to reshape Seattle’s season. Over the Seahawks’ final four games — another finale with the No. 1 seed on the line before a three-game march to glory — Darnold completed 65 percent of his passes for 870 yards, five touchdowns and no interceptions.

Whether it was Darnold’s four game-winning drives or the steadying hand in the postseason, he traced it all to preparation for the moment. Darnold, Macdonald and former Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak, now the Las Vegas Raiders head coach, spent countless reps with those situations in mind.

“I think I’ve always been comfortable in that situation, but I also think it’s about practicing the moment and visualizing it,” Darnold said. “It was like, all right, this is what we’re going to call. By that time last year, I knew exactly what our coordinator was going to call, and you know what routes we like for certain coverages, what I could check into against certain coverages. It’s just being glued into those situations, having done them so much in walk-throughs to where it’s like, OK, I know exactly what we’re doing. I think that’s where the comfort comes from.”

Darnold made a couple throws Aug. 3 during team drills in practice that were representative of that time spent. One appeared easy, as he delivered a post route to Cooper Kupp before the receiver got out of his break.

The other, a deep corner route to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, was entirely about reading defensive leverage through the same eyes as his receiver. It was a tricky read, though, so the long connection with the reigning Offensive Player of the Year couldn’t have happened without the chemistry together.

Nothing is seamless, however. New offensive coordinator Brian Fleury overlapped with Darnold in San Francisco, but Fleury has never called plays before. They’ve got a nice foundation with a ton of carryover within the system, but Darnold and Fleury simply need experience to hit a similar groove.

Macdonald wants them to reach a point where they have a full alignment on concepts they like to run, how many plays are worth taking into a game, how they’ll work together in high-leverage situations and the like.

“The sky is the limit. Why would I put a limit on his development?” Macdonald said. “We respect what he’s gone through, but it’s not like we’re factoring that in on how we coach him. We invested in him, so we’re going to dive in headfirst and just go rip it. It’s really that simple.

“Right now in camp, how far can we take your game? So let’s just go for it and see where we land in a month. We’re not doing that by going through the motions. We’re going through that by having the correct mix of really pushing him, schematically challenging him on defense, setting up situations to have success, coaching the heck out of him, talking situational football.”

Darnold is still fine-tuning plenty of elements in his own game, too. There are route concepts, for example, when he feels his footwork and base getting too loose, which has resulted in errant throws. Now’s the time to shore up any undesirable habits.

For what it’s worth, Darnold also knows he’ll get clobbered by Macdonald’s defense if he doesn’t show up every day hyper-focused. That was the case when he was in Minnesota, too, where Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores liked to practice with an attack-first, offense-be-damned mentality. Darnold and the offense couldn’t just go through the motions with the calls on the play sheets — he had to be prepared to make checks at the line just to survive a practice.

“It’s challenging as a quarterback to make certain calls, but that’s the fun part about playing quarterback, man,” Darnold said as his smile widened. “I’ve watched Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers make all these checks at the line of scrimmage. When you get to dissect the defense, figure out what they’re doing, be able to check them, get into a good play call, that’s always really fun for me.”

On the exterior, Darnold looks to be at ease. He’s relaxed, comfortable, in total control.

Internally, he’s the opposite. He doesn’t see a singular destination within his drive to squeeze everything imaginable out of the game. Therefore, a Super Bowl was never the end result, but one checkpoint along the way.

“I’ve never felt like I’ve reached the pinnacle. I never feel like I will,” Darnold said. “My dad always taught me everything happens for a reason, so I’ve always had that mindset. As long as you work hard, hard work is going to pay off at some point, whether it’s in your football life or your life as a husband, as a father one day, as a grandparent.

“Those lessons you learn while working hard and going through tough times, they pay off eventually. You just may not know when.”