Seattle Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold is getting ready for the biggest game of his career against the Los Angeles Rams.

While Darnold has appeared in the Super Bowl before, he only did so as a backup quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. This weekend, he’ll have a chance to start in the NFC Championship against the Rams, who eliminated him last year when he was with the Minnesota Vikings.

Before Darnold was with any of these NFL teams, he started out his professional career with the New York Jets as the No. 3 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft out of USC. During his college days, he was teammates with defensive end Leonard Williams, whose path has eerily matched with Darnold to get to the pacific northwest. Now, the pair have a chance to reach a Super Bowl together.

“He means a lot to this team. I’ve been around him in college, I’ve been around him early in his career on the Jets, and I think as soon as I saw him in the building here, I saw a dedicated guy. He’s dedicated to his craft, dedicated to the work, dedicated to this organization, and he’s just a special leader on this team,” Williams said of Darnold.

Darnold, Williams have unusual path together

The pair were teammates in college for two seasons at USC before Williams went to the league as a first-round pick for the New York Jets. In 2018, Darnold became the Jets’ quarterback and played with Williams again for two seasons before the defensive star was dealt to the New York Giants in the middle of the season. Darnold stuck with the Jets for one more season before the team traded him to the Carolina Panthers ahead of the 2021 season.

Two years later, Williams was dealt again, this time to the Seahawks. Two years after that, Darnold rejoined them, and now the pair have a chance to get to the mountain top of the football world together. While things are a bit different, Williams says things have shifted a bit.

“I think we’re both very different. Even for me, I was too young to pay attention to other guys that much. Now I’m a veteran, I can understand what guys are going through. I can be more of a leader in that space where I can see what’s going on in the locker room. When he first got to the Jets, I was still young as well, so it was harder for me to pay attention to what other guys were doing,” Williams said of Darnold.

The two were not called upon to be leaders on a young Jets team, but now that they have both grown in their careers, they are being asked to play a big role for the Seahawks on and off the field. The Seahawks will need both of them to be on their A-game in order to reach the Super Bowl for the first time in 11 years.

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SEATTLE — Brett Kulak broke a second-period tie with his first goal of the season, and the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Seattle Kraken 6-3 on Monday.

Kulak, acquired from Edmonton in December as part of the trade for goalie Tristan Jarry, scored for the first time since last year’s Western Conference final. The defenseman ripped a one-timer to give the Penguins a 3-2 lead with 5:15 left in the second.

Several other unlikely offensive contributors chipped in for the Penguins (23-14-11). Fellow defenseman Parker Witherspoon got the scoring started with a wrister from the point that slid past Seattle goalie Joey Daccord for his third of the season.

Pittsburgh center Connor Dewar scored short-handed in the first period and added an empty-net goal with 29.6 seconds remaining. Dewar’s first goal marked the third straight game the Kraken (21-18-9) have yielded a short-handed goal.

After falling behind 2-0, the Kraken tied it on goals from forward Ben Meyers and defenseman Ryan Lindgren. Meyers’ goal was his career-high fifth of the season. Eeli Tolvanen also scored for Seattle, which has lost four straight and six of seven.

Justin Brazeau scored early in the third for the Penguins to make it 4-2. Rickard Rakell added an insurance goal before Dewar’s empty-netter. Pittsburgh won for the second time in three games following a three-game skid.

Penguins captain Sidney Crosby had two assists in his 1,400th career game. Stuart Skinner stopped 20 shots.

Daccord made 26 saves for Seattle.

Up next

Penguins: At the Calgary Flames on Wednesday night.

Kraken: Host the New York Islanders on Wednesday night.

CHICAGO — It wasn’t just the Chicago Bears who had a pattern this season.

The Rams had one too.

Whereas Chicago stacked storybook endings, the Rams failed to finish what they started with disturbing regularity.

Five losses. Five fizzles.

Remember the unsatisfying finale to “The Sopranos”? Swelling crescendo … then abrupt cut to black? That was the Rams. Out of gas. Out of answers.

Said defensive star Jared Verse: “All our losses were self-inflicted.”

Two weeks into the playoffs and the Rams have turned a corner. Suddenly, they close out games.

Sure, there were blemishes to their 20-17 overtime victory at Chicago on Sunday night, just as their three-point win at Carolina had its wild-card warts.

The point is, when the Rams needed to land the knockout blow, they delivered.

That’s just where they want to be heading into the NFC championship game at Seattle, where last month they frittered away a 16-point lead in the fourth quarter and wound up losing in overtime.

Seismologists are at the ready. That’s how loud Lumen Field will be. The ground might be shaking in Seattle, but the Rams won’t be.

“We don’t think about that last game too much,” Rams safety Kam Curl said. “[Seattle] got lucky and won it in the end. I feel like we’re the better team.”

He then conceded, “It’s going to be a dogfight.”

In football vernacular, Curl was a dawg Sunday night, coming up with a huge interception of Caleb Williams in overtime and setting up the winning field-goal drive.

That turned back the almost-supernatural heroics of the Bears, who won games with fourth-quarter comebacks seven times this season, more than any other team. And the touchdown by Williams at the end of regulation, when he dropped back from the 14 to the 40 — the forty! — and somehow found Cole Kmet in the end zone will live in Chicago sports lore.

Yet on a frigid night, in the swirling snow, these Rams told fate to take a hike.

Rams safety Quentin Lake said the down times this season, the frustration of losing those close games, “gave us the experience and confidence” to turn on the afterburners now.

“We know what it takes to not feel that feeling again,” he said. “The only team that’s beaten the Rams is the Rams, just put it like that.”

Among the cold and imposing bodies in Chicago on Sunday: Lake Michigan and Lake, Quentin.

In the fourth quarter, with the Bears two yards from scoring, Lake caught leaping running back D’Andre Swift in the air and planted him into the turf for no gain. It was a key play in a goal-line stand that stole all the oxygen from the crowd.

“I had to channel my inner Carnell Lake on that one,” he said of his father, the legendary UCLA and Pittsburgh Steelers defensive back.

That wasn’t the only channeling the Rams did. They converted a fourth and one in the fourth quarter by handing the ball to receiver Puka Nacua, a play reminiscent of a jet sweep to Cooper Kupp in a similar situation in the Super Bowl.

Rams linebacker Byron Young, left, and defensive tackle Poona Ford (95) tackle Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams during the third quarter of the Rams’ 20-17 overtime win in the NFC divisional playoffs on Sunday.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

And their win at Chicago had the feel of their divisional win at Tampa Bay four years ago, when they went on to hoist the Lombardi Trophy. In that 30-27 victory over the Buccaneers, the Rams similarly responded to a gut punch near the end — a Tampa Bay touchdown to tie — then marched 62 yards in the final 42 seconds and won it with a field goal.

Like this season’s Rams, there were all sorts of red flags in the regular season for that team. Those Rams didn’t win a game in November, then got hot.

That path to the Super Bowl is woven into the tapestry of great moments in Los Angeles sports. The Rams beat the Buccaneers, then toppled San Francisco in the conference title game at SoFi Stadium before winning it all against Cincinnati on that same field.

Now, yet another showdown with a division rival for a trip to the Super Bowl.

Speaking of flashbacks, three of the four potential Super Bowl matchups are rematches: Rams-New England, Seattle-New England and Seattle-Denver.

There is a healthy amount of respect between the Rams and Seahawks, and — at least from the Rams in the locker room Sunday night — a feeling that this matchup was fated.

“Something about that moment when we lost that game [in Seattle] that I felt like we’ll be back here again,” defensive lineman Kobie Turner said. “And honestly, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

So after dumping destiny on its head in Chicago, the Rams are cool with it again. They used to freeze under pressure. Sunday, somehow, they thawed.