Redemption, Thy Name is Darnold

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I didn’t think he was great. No one seemed surprised when he didn’t win Super Bowl MVP. But Sam Darnold was good. In a Super Bowl! And all too recently, that seemed… implausible, if not impossible.

If you go back five years, Darnold’s career looked like it was already over. He’d flamed out spectacularly. It was bad. He could’ve very well gone the way of his draft classmate, Josh Rosen. You would’ve had him high on the list of Jets busts, the latest in a sad line.

It wasn’t until Darnold dramatically revived his career in Minnesota, taking the Vikings from 7-10 to 14-3, only to dramatically flame out once more in the playoffs and get sent packing.

That did not work out for Minnesota, who fell back to 9-8 and must now confront whether they made a humongous mistake. They’ve already confirmed that to some degree by firing the GM who made that call.

It did work out for Darnold, who just went and put up another 14-3 season in a tough division. Nothing to it.

It also worked out for the Seahawks, as you might’ve picked up on, what with all the confetti and such. Seattle didn’t have quite as far to climb, as they were 10-7 last year, but still, let us not forget. They did a version of what Minnesota did last offseason too. They let their incumbent QB, Geno Smith, walk out the door. He went to Vegas, who ended up with the worst record in the NFL, while Darnold came in and helped elevate this team into a Super Bowl winner.

It’s all pretty wild. Again, even after last year, this was less than assured. We all had a lot of Darnold baggage. About a year ago, after that horrific playoff loss, this was the subtitle to an article I wrote about Darnold.

When a good quarterback proves he’s good, the question then becomes: is he good enough?

And even going into this game, I’ll admit — I wasn’t sure. I had a hint of doubt in my mind as to whether Darnold might go out there, throw three picks, and lose the Seahawks a game they should’ve won. That was conceivable to me.

And look, let’s be real. He was almost picked off in the first few drives. You could tell the mission for the Patriots was to aggressively pursue a turnover early.

But he avoided a single one, which the Seahawks as a team were able to do through their entire playoff run. And that’s a pretty solid indicator if you’re trying to project the team that wins it all. A great defense and a mistake-free offense are a workable recipe to get it done.

And get it done they did. Darnold repeatedly climbed the pocket and escaped pressure with a level of field awareness that the younger Drake Maye looked woefully unable to process. Frankly, Maye looked very early-stage Darnold in this game, as he had for much of the last few weeks. I think he’ll be fine in the long run, and maybe he was indeed hurt.

But this is about Darnold, and how he has now completed one of the more improbable QB revivals in the history of the sport. We don’t see this very often. And even in the cases where they do — take some other first-round picks who went onto better things in later stops: Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, or, until this past year, Geno Smith — most of those guys were never quite as buried as Darnold.

And most of them never get to the mountaintop either. In other words: they don’t have as far to climb, but they rarely make it. That’s what makes this so impressive.

Darnold didn’t light the world on fire in the big one. He went 19/38 for 202 yards and a TD. But, crucially, he was sacked only once, where the younger Darnold would’ve surely succumbed to multiple, and — again, let’s be real — probably would’ve coughed the ball up at least once. Probably twice.

Instead, he’s holding the trophy. At the Seahawks’ championship parade this week, he said the following:

"I've talked a lot this last week about belief. A lot of people didn't believe in me, but it didn't matter because the ones that are close believed in me, including you all. I appreciate you all so much… I appreciate the belief you all had in me for signing me this past year… And last but certainly not least, these players, man, for believing in me. I wouldn't be here without these guys."

To which I would say: neither would they. Go Darnold.

📚 In the end, I enjoyed Vigil. Was it my favorite George Saunders? No, it was not. But it was Saunders, and that made it worth it. And for what it’s worth, some of the concerns I had over unfettered preachiness — to recap, this is a book about a dastardly oil tycoon on his deathbed who is visited by a spirit sent to usher him into the afterlife — turned out not to be a huge concern. I’m on The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell now, which has been really good so far if you’re into, idk, the Dutch East India Company’s presence in Nagasaki in 1799. I know you guys get down with that type of thing.

⚾ What a fall for Nick Castellanos. I had kinda forgotten that he was benched during the Phillies’ stretch run last year, but he seemed to have worn out his welcome there, which is… understandable. He’s never struck me as the easiest to get along with. Still, waived? Yikes. Big yikes.

🏈 Trinidad Chambliss has been granted a sixth year of eligibility to return to college, which I think he would benefit from having. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I love his game, and I’m pretty sure Ole Miss is going to be excited about that news. I’d love to see how the Heisman odds just shifted.

🏀 The Jazz are putting on an absolutely disgraceful tanking clinic. Those Utahns really know how to do it. So there’s one longstanding NBA crisis touched upon. Let’s do another!

🏀 I’d rather not repeat the suggestion I heard Nick Wright make to Bill Simmons on the actual only way to make the NBA All-Star Game competitive again, but I will admit: I laughed.