Tom Rock: Seattle's Super Bowl lesson to Jets, Giants, other teams: Give players time to develop

SAN FRANCISCO — The Seahawks kicked a field goal on the opening possession and led the rest of the game until the confetti shot into the air. It was a pretty straightforward game.

Just don’t say there was no big comeback in Super Bowl LX.

It may not have happened on the scoreboard, but for a Seahawks roster loaded with players who, for one reason or another, were discarded by other organizations and given up on before they probably should have been, the trajectory of this season and their championship was made all the sweeter.

Sam Darnold is the standout when it comes to the Seattle recycling program, having gone through four previous teams with varying degrees of success before becoming a Super Bowl-winning quarterback. He is one of only seven of those active in the league, and depending on what happens this offseason with Aaron Rodgers, Joe Flacco and Russell Wilson, that list could be cut nearly in half by the time the 2026 season rolls around. His tale of redemption is an all-timer.

But there were so many others, too.

The Giants let Julian Love walk in free agency after four years of upward trajectory. He wound up making a key interception in the second half of the 29-13 victory over the Patriots.

For Leonard Williams, New York is the city so impatient that it traded him twice. He was sent from the Jets to the Giants, then from the Giants to the Seahawks. He helped the Seattle defense suffocate everything the Patriots tried to do at the line of scrimmage.

This isn’t just a Giants and Jets thing, though. The Rams thought Cooper Kupp was washed up and reportedly told him he should retire. He won a title.

DeMarcus Lawrence spent 11 seasons with the Cowboys before leaving in free agency last offseason. When he signed with the Seahawks, he said: “Dallas is my home, I made my home there, my family lives there, and I’m forever going to be there . . . but I know for sure I’m not going to win a Super Bowl there.”

He had to come to Seattle.

The 31 teams that fell short should recognize the lesson from the dumpster-diving Seahawks: If you want to succeed, stop giving up on good players.

The Giants and Jets both felt the sting of that lesson last year when former running back Saquon Barkley and former tackle-turned-guard Mekhi Becton won a championship with the Eagles. Now Love and Williams and Darnold have been added to the list of players who benefited from having New York run out of patience for them.

“The need for gratification is immediate in this league,” Love told Newsday while clutching a celebratory cigar an hour or so after the game. “You want somebody to be a star from Day 1. We have a lot of guys whose stories have been a little different.”

Said Williams: “It’s not just my own individual journey of being hurt, being traded, being in a lot of losing seasons, all that stuff, but also the journey we had as a team. It’s been a dream this year .  .  . That’s what makes this moment that much more beautiful.”

And another nightmare for teams that let those pieces go.

It’s too late to do anything about those decisions. What’s done is done. But it would behoove the Giants and Jets, both trying to re-establish themselves as competitive teams after several years of unwatchable poor play, to start pausing before they hit the eject button on the guys they have and the guys they’ll soon be getting.

At some point, the Jets will try again with a quarterback through the draft, and when he hasn’t reached a Super Bowl-winning level by his third or fourth season, they should remember how they felt Sunday night while watching Darnold win it all. They should hope they don’t have to watch Sauce Gardner or Quinnen Williams do the same next year.

The Giants, too, have made a habit of discharging too much talent in recent years. Besides Barkley, Love and Williams, there also is Xavier McKinney and even, if you want to consider him in this way, Daniel Jones, who started to rewrite his narrative with the Colts before tearing an Achilles.

The Giants feel as if they are in a much better place with Jaxson Dart as their quarterback rather than Jones, but who knows what they’ll think in a few years if Dart doesn’t live up to the hype? He could be gone and the temptation will be there to find someone to take his place.

Round and round we go, always looking for the next best thing rather than taking the time to develop what you have.

You could make a very strong roster out of players the Giants and Jets either let walk or shoved out the door in recent years, maybe one better than either of the teams that are there now. Some teams, such as the Seahawks, manage to be better than the sum of their parts. The Giants and Jets could be worse than the sum of their departeds.

That’s just based on talent. That these guys didn’t give up even when given up on says a lot about why the teams should have kept them around, too.

“I think good people find a way to battle through,” Love said. “It could have been so easy, and 99% of the people would have given in to the pressure. But Sam Darnold, our captain, our leader, he didn’t. He showed up each day for the last eight years and continued to get better, continued to be who he is. For him to take the field for us is so special. We love him so much because we know what he has been through. I know what he has been through.”

Much like Darnold, Love didn’t feel the need to gloat overtly. This was about the Seahawks winning, not about what the Giants or Jets missed out on. He didn’t have to say anything about that.

“This result,” he said, “speaks for itself.”

And it’s something that those teams need to hear and learn from. Otherwise they’ll continue to make the same miscalculations that led them to watching the playoffs and Super Bowl on television rather than being in it.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

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.