The Football Player, or: How I Am Learning to Stop Worrying and Love Sam Darnold
The 2025 Seattle Seahawks will go as far as their defense can carry them. Or their running game. Or their offensive line. Or their quarterback.
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It’s easy to throw out statements like those, but as we know, Mike Macdonald sees his team more as a group of complementary parts that need to fit together for the team to succeed.
He’s been right so far.
I watched them take down the 49ers on Saturday night and immediately credited the defense with doing the lion’s share of the work. After all, they held a top-tier offense to just three points, 173 yards, eight first downs, and 2 of 11 on third and fourth downs. They shut down Christian McCaffrey, physically punished anyone who dared touch the ball, and held San Francisco to just 42 offensive plays.
That last number sure helps explain the rest of them – 42 plays is very low for an NFL football game, and the Seahawks’ defensive success had a lot to do with it. But how about the offensive contribution to that?
In fact, Seattle’s offense held the ball for nearly 38 minutes in this game, more than 16 minutes on its first and last possessions combined. Could Brock Purdy and the Niners have put up more yards or more points with an extra possession or two in the fourth quarter? Maybe. But we’ll never know because the Seahawks went on an 8:01 march that sucked the life out of the building (even though it ended without points).
Clearly, this Seahawks defense is incredible. You can check all the stats, but really all you need are eyes to see it. Macdonald believes in the pieces complementing each other, so the offense has to play a role in that success.
All of this is a (too) long way of getting to Sam Darnold.
Sam has presented a unique challenge for me. I can’t quite get a handle on what kind of a quarterback he is, what I should expect from him, and whether he can be trusted in the biggest moments. I’ve tried looking at what he is, what he’s been and what he isn’t.
I know he isn’t really a gunslinger like Brett Favre or Jay Cutler – he doesn’t need to throw it 40 times per game and I think he has a conscience.
I know he isn’t a game manager either, because he doesn’t thrive dinking and dunking and, quite frankly, he turns the ball over too often for that label.
He isn’t an elite quarterback who manipulates the defense, always makes the right decision and strikes fear into every opponent.
But he sure isn’t one of the wannabes that occasionally sneak into the playoffs and usually revert back to form once they get there.
I like Sam. And when he plays the way he did on Saturday night in Santa Clara – no turnovers, using his legs on occasion and making the handful of key throws necessary to put the game away – the Seahawks are capable of beating anybody, anywhere, anytime. But it’s been hard for me to trust that that version is going to show up every week, and especially against top-tier defenses that generate pressure.
Maybe I’m not a naturally trusting person, but I think it takes a long time to earn trust and it’s not simply given. Certainly, the trust has grown for Sam over the course of the season, but some of the bad memories of 14 interceptions and a league-leading 11 fumbles (not all of them lost) are hard to shake.
Here’s the thing about Sam, the thing that is helping me learn to love him. And if you have been struggling like me, maybe this will help you too. It involves twisting around some language, and maybe it’s a technicality.
Don’t think of Sam as a quarterback. Think of him as a football player.
This simple but massively important hermeneutical change allows you to appreciate more of his strengths without focusing on his limits. Sam the Football Player fits in with the guys and is a real and genuine dude. He doesn’t need special treatment. He doesn’t need an office or his own suite or his own office in the building. He doesn’t fight with teammates at practice or get into petty squabbles with the media. He doesn’t skip practice or pretend to be hurt just to prove a point. And if he was a big social media guy, I don’t think he would use the unfollow button as a weapon to display his displeasure.
That style has allowed the chemistry and camaraderie on the team to flourish. It is incredibly effective in the locker room and on the practice field. But it also translates to the games.
Sam the Football Player isn’t caught up in how things look. Far too many quarterbacks are. It’s easy to say, “he doesn’t care about his stats,” but he truly doesn’t seem to care about his stats. That allows him to be the complementary piece that Mike Macdonald needs him to be.
And Sam the Football Player is able to flush bad plays. He has to. Just like all the other positional players need to do. He can make massive mistakes and, as long as they don’t come too late in the game, find a way to overcome them. For a coach that stresses “stacking plays” and the opposite – not allowing bad plays to stack up against you – this is a huge deal and something the Seahawks were missing before Sam arrived.
Thinking about Sam that way helps me. I’m learning to love him. And with a few more wins, the trust will accompany that love.
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