Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz, senior NFL writer Frank Schwab and guest host Mike Golic Jr. discuss the new Seahawks quarterback’s outlook for the upcoming season and why the memory of his late season struggles with the Vikings in 2024 could carry over to this season. Hear the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

View more

Advertisement

Video Transcript

What about Sam Darnold?

You guys have mentioned him a couple of times.

He goes to Seattle now where he replaces Geno Smith.

If he goes to Seattle and has another good year, like we have to take the training wheels off that takes on Sam Darnold at that point, don’t we?

Yeah, like, listen, I think he did the bulk of his career renaissance washing last year.

Obviously, the last couple of games, he’s talked about it and been open about the fact that that undid a lot of the goodwill and for so many people it was saying.

Old Sam after that.

So, yes, going in and doing it outside of the context of an offense that most of us look at as bumper bowling for quarterbacks, yeah, I, I think would go a long way in people maybe absolving him in the last couple of games.

Advertisement

I’ve never really seen a story like Sam Darnold, as far as he was awesome for 16 games.

Like he really was, like, he got, he got an MVP ballots.

He was, I think, 7th in the MVP voting, uh.

He was legitimately that good, where you could talk about him in the conversation of an MVP and then like you said, he has two bad games and everybody’s like, yep, he stinks.

Like it’s, it’s stunning to me how we have just erased the first, you know, 90% of last season because he played poorly in two games.

I will say if I if I could give them more favorable read, it would be a reminder that trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets.

Advertisement

And now all of a sudden when you put a few here and then kick them over because right wrong or indifferent, like we always talk about this, we over.

Index on primetime games, on late games at the end of the season, on playoff games, because more people are watching those all at once than the rest of us skimming the red zone.

So they tend to more often and more fully inform our opinion just because there’s more casual eyeballs on that situation.

So it doesn’t make it any better.

I’m sure there is still some confirmation bias in there, but it’s also like, uh, this is like we talked about, uh, uh, before with Daniel Jones too, there’s a full body of Work already under the hood for some of these guys.

Advertisement

It’s not like guys that started a couple of games and got their chance a year late.

These are multi-year starters in the NFL where we do have some body of work on who you’ve been.

I like Sam Darnold.

I think Sam Darnold is going to do pretty well in Seattle.

I think Sam Darnold’s a lot better than people are giving him credit for.

That’s basically my only thing, but to the point of our exercise right now, if he goes out and he stinks again, like he did the last two games, we’re just gonna trash Sam Darnold, but we’re just gonna say, yep, that that was just a fluke, those first 17 games or 16 games of the 2024 season.

Close