Darnold's Got a Ring. I'm Still Not Sure What to Make of Him.

System QB or the Real Thing?

Here's the honest take: Darnold ranked 19th in QBR this season. Nineteen. In a league with 32 starters. He was fine — consistently fine, occasionally good, rarely great. And that 19th-ranked QB won the championship because the Seattle defense is an absolute monster. They held New England scoreless through three full quarters of a Super Bowl. They sacked Drake Maye six times. Devon Witherspoon forced a fumble that Uchenna Nwosu returned 45 yards for a touchdown. Jason Myers, the kicker, set a Super Bowl record with five field goals. When your kicker is the MVP conversation, that tells you something about where the offensive firepower is coming from. [1]

None of this is an insult to Darnold. Running a functional offense while your defense is terrifying is genuinely hard to do — plenty of QBs have blown leads that a dominant defense built for them. Darnold didn't do that. He protected the ball in the moments that mattered, started the season 17 touchdowns in nine games, and executed offensive coordinator Brian Fleury's system with the kind of discipline that suggested he'd finally found a coaching staff that trusted him enough for him to trust himself. That growth is real. But we should be honest about what we're looking at. He's a game-manager on a great team, not a one-man army. [2]

We absolutely want him to be our quarterback for an extended period.

— Seahawks GM John Schneider, post-Super Bowl LX

Can Seattle Actually Run This Back?

This is the real question, and it's messier than the victory parade made it look. Darnold is on a three-year, $100.5 million deal with $55 million guaranteed — manageable, but not cheap. His 2026 cap hit lands around $37.9 million. Meanwhile, the Seahawks have a roster full of players on expiring deals, an ownership situation that complicates long-term spending, and the inevitable regression-to-the-mean that hits every team that wins ugly. Seattle has also seen this movie before: they had the Legion of Boom defense, Russell Wilson at QB, and they still managed to blow it up within a few years of back-to-back Super Bowl appearances. [2]

The dynasty question is legitimate. Seahawks fans have been through this before. But here's what's different: Darnold's contract doesn't break the bank the way Wilson's eventually did, and this defense looks like it has a year or two more of peak production before it needs significant rebuilding. The window is open. Whether Seattle can afford to keep the pieces together — and whether Darnold can take another step forward into true franchise-QB territory — is the storyline to watch all offseason. [3]

For now, though, let's give credit where it's due. Sam Darnold survived the New York Jets. He survived the Carolina Panthers. He washed out in Minnesota and San Francisco. He rebuilt his career from scratch with a new staff, a new system, and what sounds like genuinely renewed focus. And he walked out of Levi's Stadium as a Super Bowl champion. I still have complicated feelings about all of it — I think most Jets fans do. But I know this: of all the quarterbacks we've drafted and discarded over the decades, Sam Darnold getting his ring somewhere else might actually be the most Jets thing that's ever happened to us. I respect it. It still stings. Congratulations, Sam. I'll be over here, waiting for 2027.