Why Sam Darnold and the Seahawks could be the perfect schematic fit

Seattle’s experience against Sam Darnold during his 2024 season in Minnesota paved the way for this move.

Sam Darnold has certainly been through some things in his NFL career. The third overall pick in the 2018 draft out of USC by the New York Jets, Darnold was an outright bust with his first NFL team, and he was traded to the Carolina Panthers before the 2021 season for a handful of unremarkable draft picks. After serving as a placeholder quarterback with the Panthers for two seasons, Darnold became Brock Purdy’s backup with the San Francisco 49ers in 2023, and that was the last most people thought they’d ever hear from him.

The tipping point for Darnold’s career was certainly unexpected. He signed a one-year, $10 million deal with the Minnesota Vikings on March 13, 2024, and this was once again to be a backup for a younger guy – Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy, selected by the Vikings with the 10th overall pick in the 2024 draft. But when McCarthy suffered a torn meniscus in the preseason, it was all Darnold’s show, and he responded in ways that nobody could have expected.

Through the first 17 weeks of the 2024 season, Darnold was about as good as any NFL quarterback. In Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell’s system, he completed 343 of 504 passes for 4,153 yards, 35 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, and a passer rating of 106.4 — fifth-best among NFL starting quarterbacks. Then he got waylaid by the Detroit Lions in the regular-season finale, and by the Los Angeles Rams in the Wild Card round of the playoffs, completing 43 of 81 passes for 411 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and a passer rating of 66.4.

It seemed that Darnold had turned back into the pumpkin he had always been before.

The Vikings decided against franchising Darnold or giving him a new contract, which put him on the open market in the new league year. That’s until the Seattle Seahawks, who had just controversially traded Geno Smith to Pete Carroll’s Las Vegas Raiders, signed him to a three-year, $100.5 million contract with $55 million guaranteed. That took the Seahawks out of the financial realm in which Smith wanted to live, and (ideally, at least) gave them a Baker Mayfield-style quarterback redemption story on a Baker Mayfield-style contract. In 2024, Mayfield signed a three-year, $100 million contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with $50 million guaranteed following a 2023 season that nobody expected, in a positive sense.

So, if the Seahawks want to benefit from that same career arc, it would behoove them to give Darnold the best possible versions of the concepts he prefers. And that’s where new Seattle offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak comes in. Kubiak became familiar with Darnold in that 2023 San Francisco year, when Kubiak was Kyle Shanahan’s passing game coordinator. Kubiak and Darnold hit it off, and now they’re together again for the first time, as they say.

Hypothetically, that should happen in spades. Kubiak was the New Orleans Saints’ offensive coordinator last season, and before injuries and roster issues saw a downturn, the offense Kubiak put together was about as good as any in the NFL. The Saints beat the Carolina Panthers 47-10 in Week 1, and shredded the Dallas Cowboys 44-19 in Week 2 before falling to earth in their own ways, but you could see the pieces Kubiak had but together for the benefit of better quarterbacks.

As much as any other NFL shot-caller, Kubiak wanted his quarterbacks to feast upon three concepts: Under-center dropbacks, play-action, and pre-snap motion. The 2024 Saints threw from under center 130 times, the fourth-most in the league. They used under-center play-action on 90 of those attempts, sixth-most in the league. And they used pre-snap motion on 312 of those attempts. All of those numbers evened out as the season progressed and Kubiak had to cycle through different quarterbacks, but when you see how Darnold performed with those three concepts last season, you start to get why this was a priority for Seattle.

Because Darnold beat up on the league when he had them in his quiver.

Under center: 113 of 161 for 1,567 yards, 891 air yards, a league-high 16 touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 129.1.

Play-action: 119 of 166 for 1,616 yards, 825 air yards, 14 touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 125.5.

Pre-snap motion: 243 of 366 for 2,835 yards, 1,599 air yards, a league-high 27 touchdowns, 10 interceptions, and a passer rating of 102.9.

All three at the same time: 66 of 96 for 912 yards, 463 air yards, eight touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 126.7.

“Yeah, [it] definitely stands out on tape,” Kubiak said at the March 13 press conference which served as Darnold’s (and Kubiak’s) introduction to his new city. “Seeing Sam turn his back to the defense and find deep crossers and hit guys in stride is definitely a strength of his game, one of many strengths, throwing on the run.”

And Darnold understood how to leverage those ideas to the detriment of a defense.

“I work on that a ton, have worked on that the last few years in the offseason,” Darnold said of the deep passes, which were a staple of his game in 2024. “Being able, whether it’s mechanics and mentally, just understanding, okay, like the leverages of safeties. How are we gonna attack this guy? How are we gonna attack the post safety this week? When they do play split safety, is it Cover-2 or Quarters? There’s so many different variations of two-high [safeties] that you can play.

“So, it’s just understanding who we’re playing, where the weaknesses are in that defense, and how we can take advantage over the top. And then, again, the biggest thing is, if it’s not there, understanding where my outlets are.”

Not that Seattle is unfamiliar with Darnold hitting deep targets using play-action under pressure. The Vikings came up to the Emerald City last Dec. 22, and it was Darnold who pushed his team past a 24-20 deficit with 3:51 left in the game.

“I definitely felt Sam throughout the game,” Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald said of that 27-24 loss. “And you’re calling a game against the quarterback, the personnel, your people, the person calling the plays on their team. So, it was a heck of a battle.

“To see it in person and see him perform and scout him throughout the week, you’re watching a lot of tape of pretty much every snap throughout the season. So [we] probably wouldn’t have had that exposure going into the whole thing if we hadn’t played Sam.”

The Seahawks still have a lot of work to do if they’re to continue the Happy Sam Darnold Story. Trading DK Metcalf to the Pittsburgh Steelers gives them a hole at the X-iso receiver position that will not be solved by anybody currently on the roster, and their offensive line is still the same disaster it was in 2024, at least on paper. Most likely, the draft will have to solve those issues, because taking a three-year, $45 million flyer on Cooper Kupp isn’t a cure-all at this point in Kupp’s career.

But in that so many quarterback failures are destined to happen because the team involved has no clarity on what works best for the quarterback, Seattle definitely has a head start there. Darnold and Kubiak appear to be the perfect couple.