Super Bowl 2026: For Jets, Patriots starting another dynasty is worse than Sam Darnold winning title
Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold, left, and Patriots quarterback Drake Maye. Credit: Getty Images/Jane Gershovich; Justin Edmonds
The Jets have a much bigger Super Bowl headache to deal with than all of the easy jokes about their former quarterback being on the verge of a championship with another team.
Sure, Sam Darnold, now with the Seahawks, will be the first Super Bowl starter who was selected by the Jets in the NFL Draft (a bit of a technicality, given that they picked Joe Namath when they were in the AFL). It’s a little like saying the Giants haven’t drafted a Super Bowl quarterback since 1984 because they did not actually pick Eli Manning but traded for him shortly after he was selected by the Chargers . . . except the Giants won two titles because of that subtle difference.
Could the Jets have built a playoff team around Darnold if they had stuck with him beyond his first three seasons in the league? Possibly. If they were going to jettison him, should they have done it with someone who had more promise and potential than Zach Wilson? Definitely.
It wasn’t getting rid of Darnold that set the Jets back and led to the extension of their playoff drought, it was whom they chose to replace him with that did that.
Besides, the team that should be lambasted for giving up on Darnold isn’t the Jets, it’s the Vikings. He led them to a 14-3 record last season and they let him walk as a free agent. Darnold then lifted the Seahawks to a 14-3 record this season along with the top seed in the NFC playoffs, two postseason victories and now an appearance in Super Bowl LX.
Oh, and the Vikings let Daniel Jones skip town, too. He had the Colts at 7-1 midway through the season. Who knows what he could have done if he had not torn his Achilles when they were 8-4.
The result for the Vikings was clear, though: a 9-8 regression of a season in which they failed to reach the playoffs and still don’t have a solid answer at the most important position in the sport.
But that’s not what should worry the Jets right now.
It’s the other team in the Super Bowl that should. The team that plays in their division.
The Jets just emerged from a 20-year stretch in which they were almost always subordinates to a coach and quarterback combo in New England, and now they may be on the verge of another such era.
Mike Vrabel and Drake Maye, in their first season together, have rekindled the talk of dynastic rule for the Patriots. Whether they win next Sunday or not, it’s pretty clear that the Patriots are going to be contenders for the foreseeable future.
Former Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, now an analyst for Fox, clearly thought so as soon as this Super Bowl matchup was set.
“This is going to be a rematch,” he said on air. “The last time Seattle was in the Super Bowl, it was versus the Patriots, and the Patriots won, and it was the start of the second dynasty. Is it going to be the start of the third dynasty?”
The Jets had better hope not.
They’re already in a division with one MVP quarterback in Josh Allen. How will they be able to compete with potentially two of them there?
Maye is a finalist for the award this year. In his second season, he’s already done what Allen hasn’t. What Lamar Jackson and Dak Prescott haven’t. What Justin Herbert and Trevor Lawrence haven’t. He’s gotten his team to the Super Bowl.
Vrabel was a linebacker for the first Patriots dynasty that won Super Bowls in the 2001, 2003 and 2004 seasons. He was on the sideline for the end of the second, head coach of a Titans team that knocked off Tom Brady in his final playoff game as a Patriot. Now he’s here for this one, although he is not yet ready to compare what he has going to what preceded him.
“We’re building our own identity,” he said.
Still, Vrabel can become part of the short list of folks who have won a Super Bowl as a player and a head coach, joining Mike Ditka, Tom Flores, Tony Dungy and Doug Pederson. Not one of them did it as a coach with the same team he won with as a player, though. Vrabel could be the first. That’s what makes him the link.
Meanwhile, at this point, the Jets can’t say for sure who their offensive coordinator will be, who their quarterback will be, who their running back will be or what their identity will be in 2026. Their head coach, Aaron Glenn, spent all of his first season talking about having a plan, but in the last month, he has crumpled it up and tossed it in the wastebasket along with most of his coaching staff. They have the No. 2 pick in what is shaping up to be a one-quarterback draft.
It feels as if the Jets are starting over. Again. It also feels as if it will feel that way at this point next year, too.
So yes, while there is a bit of Jets chagrin at seeing Darnold at the top of the sport, the people who made the decisions about him are long gone from the building. And it’s not like it was for the Giants last year, when they had to watch Saquon Barkley carry the Eagles — a hated division rival — to a Super Bowl win after they let him leave in free agency.
It took years for Darnold to reach this point; he had stints with the Panthers, 49ers and Vikings before getting here with the Seahawks. No other Super Bowl-winning quarterback has played for more than three teams; Darnold could do it with his fifth. At least the Jets have company in this miscalculation.
Watching Darnold play in a Super Bowl for Seattle will be tough for the Jets.
Watching what the Patriots have done all season, however, is far worse.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
