First Elway, then Paton and Payton sought Darnold, who after a rocky start to his NFL career, lifted two different teams to consecutive 14-3 seasons.

DENVER — Sam Darnold was not yet a back-to-back, 14-3 quarterback but credit Broncos’ evaluators past and present for thinking he might be.

On two occasions, six years apart, the Broncos tried to land Darnold.

His latest sublime season is still going as Darnold is preparing to lead the Seattle Seahawks into a Super Bowl LX matchup next Sunday against the New England Patriots. Both teams arrive here today (Sunday) to resume their preparations for the game that will kick off around 4:35 Sunday afternoon at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

The first time the Broncos tried to nab Darnold was during the 2018 NFL Draft. For all his recent reminiscent regret about Josh Allen, Broncos’ general manager John Elway on draft day zeroed in on USC’s Darnold with his No. 5 overall pick.

Problem was, with the Cleveland Browns set to take quarterback Baker Mayfield with their No. 1 overall draft pick, the New York Jets at No. 3 wanted Darnold. It later came out Elway tried to trade up from No. 5 to the No. 2 spot, but the New York Giants weren’t about to risk losing the chance to select running back Saquon Barkley.

So as Elway waited with his No. 5 pick, the Jets took Darnold at No. 3. Allen was still on the  board but Elway, to his everlasting remorse, ignored his gut, passed on the Cowboy-raised gunslinger and instead took outside linebacker Bradley Chubb. A fine, fine player both with the Broncos and then with the Miami Dolphins.

But Chubb didn’t singlehandedly lift his franchise to the second round of the playoffs every year like Allen has with the Bills, who traded up from No. 12 to the No. 7 draft pick to take what turned out to be a sensational dual-threat quarterback.

“The regret was I passed on Josh Allen because I liked him,’’ Elway told the author of the book, “The Elway Years,” published in October 2024. “But I couldn’t get the coaching staff to buy in at all. That’s the one thing I wish I would have gone with, what I felt was right. Athletic, move around. Not real accurate, that was his only negative coming out, but he could make all the throws, strong arm. I could not get the staff to buy in.”


A big reason the Broncos hesitated on Allen was as a prospect coming out of Wyoming, he was similar to Paxton Lynch, who the Broncos selected with their first-round pick just two years earlier. Lynch had finished up the 2017 season with two starts and was still on the Broncos’ roster at the time of the 2018 draft. Elway still harbored hopes Lynch needed a little more time to develop as the team’s backup to newly signed Case Keenum in 2018. Instead, training camp and the preseason led Elway with little choice but to cut Lynch, who never took another NFL snap.

Which brings the Broncos to the start of free agency in 2024. The team had just released Russell Wilson and was still evaluating the great college quarterback draft class of 2024 when general manager George Paton and head coach Sean Payton tried to sign Darnold as a “bridge” quarterback.

By then, Darnold was a journeyman and largely considered a No. 3 pick bust. The Jets traded him away after three seasons. Late in the 2022 season for Carolina, Darnold delivered a fine performance against the Nathaniel Hackett Broncos, completing 11 of 19 with a touchdown in a 23-10 win.


The next year, Darnold backed up Brock Purdy, who led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl. During one of the 49ers’ Super Bowl media days, 9NEWS scooted in to a chair next to where Darnold was sitting to ask about his impending free agency and the possibility of signing with the Broncos.

“I’m going to look at my options after this game,’’ Darnold said in a 9NEWS story published Feb. 11, 2024. “I’m not even going to go there in terms of where I want to go or what I’m looking forward to. I just want to stay focused on this game. And I’ll talk to my agent after the game and we’ll figure it out after that.”

Exactly a month later, as the negotiating window opened for free agency, Ben Volin of the Boston Globe reported Darnold was choosing between the Minnesota Vikings and the Broncos.

Paton and Payton saw a smart quarterback with high character and talent who could be coached out of his propensity for committing turnovers. They were right, but it was Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell, who had come from the Kyle Shanahan system Darnold enjoyed as a 49ers backup, who guided Darnold to his first 14-3 season in 2024 worthy of the NFL Comeback Player of the Year (Darnold finished third, behind Joe Burrow and the Chargers’ J.K. Dobbins).

The Vikings landed Darnold with a one-year, $10 million contract that, at the time, was big money for a bridge quarterback. The Broncos instead traded for quarterback Zach Wilson from the Jets, and that April selected Bo Nix with their No. 12 overall draft pick.

Darnold, indeed a bridge quarterback, was not re-signed by the Vikings prior to this season as Minnesota committed to J.J. McCarthy, whom they took with the No. 9 draft pick in 2024, three spots ahead of Nix. The Vikings are still waiting on the oft-injured, so-far disappointing McCarthy to come on.

Darnold moved on to Seattle last March, where he parlayed free agency into a three-year, $100.5 million contract, although he is still only the league’s 18th highest-paid quarterback. He’s been a steal as he not only led the Seahawks to a 14-3 record and No. 1 NFC playoff seed, but the first two postseason wins of his career.

He may well have met his longtime pursuer, the Denver Broncos, in Super Bowl LX next Sunday had Nix, a 36-game starter in his two seasons, not suffered a broken ankle in a 33-30 second-round playoff win in overtime against Allen’s Buffalo Bills.