On February 8, the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks will meet in Santa Clara, California for Super Bowl LX, live on NBC and Peacock! The Patriots will start quarterback Drake Maye, a second-year phenom who’s given the team a bright future and stirred up lots of MVP talk in New England. The Seahawks will start an 8-year veteran QB, who, according to a lot of football fans and pundits, was never going to make it this far. 

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Sam Darnold is only in his first season as the starting quarterback for the Seahawks, but he’s already proven a lot of people wrong. It’s been a long road with quite a few bumps, but whether he wins a Super Bowl next month or not, Darnold has silenced doubters who were never sure he could be a big game quarterback. 

“You can’t talk about the game without talking about our quarterback,” Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald said after Seattle defeated the Los Angeles Rams to win the NFC Championship. “He shut a lot of people up tonight, so I’m really happy for him.”

So, how did Darnold get here, and why did it take so long? Let’s take a closer look at the NFL saga of a possible Super Bowl champion. 

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Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold’s NFL career

Darnold came to the NFL through the University of Southern California, where he put up impressive passer numbers for the Trojans. In 2018 he declared for the NFL Draft, and was selected third overall by the New York Jets. Like a lot of Jets rookies, Darnold struggled in New York, but did manage to set franchise records for QBR and completion percentage by a rookie. 

After three seasons, Darnold was traded to the Carolina Panthers, where injuries plagued his first season as a starter. He ultimately lost the starting job to Baker Mayfield in his second year in Carolina, and even when he got the chance to take the starting job back, more injuries crept up, leaving his career as a Panther fragmented and underwhelming. When the Panthers didn’t resign him, he joined the San Francisco 49ers as Brock Purdy’s backup for the 2023 season, following the team all the way to their Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. 

In 2024, Darnold signed a one-year contract with the Minnesota Vikings, which would mark the beginning of a turning point in his career. Though he was originally expected to battle rookie J.J. McCarthy for the starting job, McCarthy suffered a season-ending injury in the preseason, making Darnold the default starter. 

As a Viking, Darnold put up the best numbers of his career, passing for more than 4,300 yards and 35 touchdowns amid a dominant regular season that saw Minnesota go 14-3. The season earned Darnold his first Pro Bowl selection and a trip to the playoffs, where he lost to the Rams in devastating fashion. After such a strong regular season, the playoff collapse, combined with a season finale loss to the Lions which cost Vikings top seeding in the playoffs, gave Darnold a reputation. To a lot of viewers, he’d become the proficient quarterback who, despite his talent, couldn’t win the big game. After the 2024 season, with McCarthy expected to start the next year for the Vikings, Darnold signed a three-year deal with the Seahawks.

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Sam Darnold’s storybook 2025 season as the starting QB for the Seattle Seahawks

With the help of MVP candidate receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba and one of the league’s best defenses, Darnold set out to prove his doubters in the 2025 season, and the Seahawks started winning. By the end of the regular season they were the top seed in the NFC Playoffs, and Darnold became the first quarterback in league history to record back-to-back 14-win seasons in his first year with a new team, and just the second quarterback (after Tom Brady) to record back-to-back 14-win seasons under any circumstances. The question remained, though: Could he win the biggest games of his career?

In the Divisional Round of the Playoffs, Darnold and the Seahawks handily defeated an injury-riddled San Francisco 49ers squad to advance to the NFC Championship, handing the quarterback the first playoff win of his career. In the Conference Championship, Darnold faced the team that eliminated him from the playoffs the year before, the Los Angeles Rams, which locked him in a quarterback duel with MVP candidate Matthew Stafford. The Seahawks outlasted the Rams as Darnold threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns, with no interceptions. In the biggest game of his career so far, Darnold stepped up and proved he could hold the offense steady in clutch situations, and he did it while battling an oblique injury that meant limited practice in the lead-up to the game.

“To come out [and play] the way he played, barely practicing, barely throwing the ball, it was really incredible,” Macdonald said. “It should go down as one of the best performances in playoff history, I would imagine. It’s hard to stack it, but I can’t imagine anybody playing any better.”

Darnold is now a serious playoff quarterback. Only one question remains: Can he win the biggest game of them all? Find out when Super Bowl LX airs Sunday, February 8 on NBC and Peacock.