Super Bowl 2026: Sam Darnold lives up to Jets' hype at last, just with the Seattle Seahawks instead
Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold celebrates after defeating the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60 on Feb. 8, 2026, in Santa Clara, Calif. Credit: AP/Brynn Anderson
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — When Sam Darnold won his first start with the Jets, it was hard to hide the excitement he brought to the franchise. They had just traded up and taken him with the third overall pick, and it seemed as if they finally had their guy. The fan base and the organization were tickled about what was to come.
But the head coach at the time, Todd Bowles, wanted to pump the brakes on that enthusiasm just a bit. A few days later, he reminded everyone that it was just one start, one game, and that the true measure of the player would have to be written over time.
“I can tell you after about 100 more of them whether we have one or not,” Bowles said.
Sunday, in Super Bowl LX, was Darnold’s 101st career start.
So now everyone can agree. Darnold is a champion.
It didn’t happen with the Jets and Bowles. That experiment fizzled out after Darnold didn’t develop at a brisk enough pace for the next wave of decision-makers to stick with him.
And it didn’t happen with the Panthers, who acquired him in a trade with the Jets. He got to a Super Bowl with the 49ers but spent the day on the bench as Brock Purdy’s backup in a loss to Kansas City. He led the Vikings to the playoffs but couldn’t get them a postseason win.
It took a fifth team, a fifth opportunity in his eighth season, for Darnold to finally reach the top. His Seahawks beat the Patriots, 29-13, at Levi’s Stadium.
Oh, it also took one of the best all-around teams in the league. It took an offense that was able to lean on running back Kenneth Walker III (27 carries for 135 yards) and a defense that lived up to its “Dark Side” nickname with a smothering effort.
It took a different former Jet to put the points on the board early, too; Jason Myers kicked four field goals for the first 12 points of the game and added a fifth in the fourth quarter.
This still is a quarterback-fronted league, though, and that means Darnold is the face of this victory. No one will recall that he was a pedestrian 19-for-38 for 202 yards. The details of the game will blur into time, especially given that it was a rather drab one dominated by defenses.
The result will live forever, though. And now, for the rest of his life, no one can doubt Darnold as a quarterback again.
Every Seahawk will get a ring. Darnold gets something even better: Redemption.
“My teammates and coaches believed in me,” he said with the confetti falling. “We did it.”
Shortly after the game ended, there was an emotional meeting on the field of everyone who never gave up on Darnold. It was a small group.
“I shared a great moment with my parents and my fiancee Katie after the game, and that’s what kind of got me a little bit,” Darnold said. “Me and my dad don’t really cry very often, and I told my dad and my mom that I am here because of their belief in me. They believed in me throughout my entire career, and that’s why I was able to believe in myself almost ad nauseam.
“Some people called me crazy throughout my career for believing in myself so much and having so much confidence, but it was because of my parents and the way they believed in me.”
Darnold also proved something else beyond his abilities: Good guys can finish first. Sometimes it just takes a little longer.
That he did this with such class in the face of his many doubters is one of the reasons many Jets fans found themselves rooting for him on Sunday. Playing against the hated Patriots helped with that, too. But Darnold has never bad-mouthed the Jets nor any of his other former organizations. He understood that the arc of his career needed time to develop. He was more patient than any front office in the league when it came to that. And when he finally found the right spot, it all clicked.
“The love that we share throughout the building is special,” he said of the Seahawks’ organization. “I’ve never been in a place like it.”
“This guy, all he does is play great football,” coach Mike Macdonald said. “He’s a great teammate every day, same guy every day, steadfast in his approach. By the way, he’s a great football player and the team loves him. I can’t be happier for anyone more than Sam Darnold being a world champion.”
Darnold’s main task in this game was to not make any costly mistakes, something that in the past was not always a strength.
He began the game by brazenly forcing passes into tight coverage with the New England defensive backs jumping routes, and he had two missed chances to crack open the low-scoring game early.
In the second quarter, he took a deep shot on a pass for Rashid Shaheed that was broken up; he had Jaxon Smith-Njigba open underneath on the play. Then, just before halftime, he tried to fit a slant pass into Smith-Njigba’s hands in the end zone. The receiver was open, but Darnold’s pass was late and allowed Christian Gonzalez to catch up and deflect it. It wasn’t intercepted, and a play later, the Seahawks kicked a field goal, but it could have given them a much more commanding lead.
In the third quarter, Darnold hit a few quick passes and scrambled for a first down with a sweet juke. The Seahawks had to settle for a field goal and a 12-0 lead, but when he threw a 16-yard touchdown pass to AJ Barner in the fourth quarter, the Seahawks led 19-0.
“With our defense and the way they have been playing, my job is to take care of the football,” Darnold said. “I knew that coming into the game and I did that. I took the open guys when they were there, and if I had to take sacks or throw the ball away, I was going to do it. I just played that kind of game and we ended up coming out on top because of it.”
Patriots quarterback Drake Maye answered Darnold’s touchdown pass with his own to avoid becoming the first team to be shut out in a Super Bowl and keep things interesting, but on the next New England possession, Maye was intercepted by former Giants safety Julian Love. Seattle converted that takeaway into another field goal and a 22-7 lead. A 44-yard interception return for a TD by Uchenna Nwosu with 4:27 left sealed it.
Darnold’s journey is far from over. He’s still only 28 years old. He is younger than Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. He still has a lot of football ahead of him. He might even have more championship runs in him. Maybe in another 100 starts he’ll be back here, maybe sooner.
Darnold wasn’t thinking about that on Sunday night. Nor was he thinking about the previous 100.
“I’ve taken it day by day throughout my entire career and it has gotten me to this point,” he said. “I’m just doing the best I can every single day to be the best quarterback I can be for the Seattle Seahawks. I didn’t have my best stuff today, but the team had my back. We played how we always play — resilient — and we came out on top.”
Or as we might need to call it now, they played The Sam Darnold Way.
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.
