The Sam Darnold story: Can Seahawks star crown comeback at Super Bowl?

Sam Darnold went to New York and lived to tell the tale. Lost like Macaulay, on hold to the Ghostbusters, risen like the Dark Knight.

It is less rags to riches, but rather mono to magic, Gotham to glory, 'stupid' Sam (his words) to Super Bowl Sam.

Sport lives for stories like that of Sam Darnold. A tale of career redemption, a jagged arc that preserves the art of surprise, a sharp jab to the throat of premature prophets. They don't come around all that often anymore, for sport lives in desperate search of proven quantities and known commodities in an era of no-stone-unturned analysis and preparation, rash to scarper at the sight of adversity and all too obsessed with immediacy - thanks a lot, elite-straight-away Patrick Mahomes.

There, of course, is also the reality of damning circumstances, the definition of which was and is the New York Jets.

For two weeks Russell Wilson, Marshawn Lynch and Pete Carroll will have witnessed the footballing world revel in the 'why didn't they run it?!' memory of Malcolm Butler's iconic goalline interception at Super Bowl 49. And for two weeks Darnold will have witnessed the footballing world remember the time he was "seeing ghosts" and the infamous Mononucleosis diagnosis while painting the picture of his revival from ridicule to the ridiculous.

On Sunday he leads the Seattle Seahawks out against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl 60 with the opportunity to crown one of the NFL and sport's greatest individual comeback stories. On Sunday comes THE reminder to young quarterbacks across football that early setbacks need not mean finality. At the same time, to suggest such a comeback could be so routine, so common would be a disservice to Darnold's magnificence.

Eight seasons, five teams and a few career obituaries later, he is at the top.

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Once upon a time an unofficial 'Suck for Sam' campaign struck college football as fans of the NFL's worst and weary warmed to the idea of tanking for the Heisman Trophy-contending USC quarterback projected, at least at the time, to go No 1 overall at the Draft.

Darnold had delivered a breakout season at college in 2016 when he threw for 3,086 yards and 31 touchdowns to nine interceptions in 13 games (nine starts), before being voted first-team All-Pac-12 in 2017 after going 303 of 480 passing for 4,143 yards and 26 touchdowns while leading USC to a Conference Championship.

He had enamoured with the fizzing arm talent, smooth progressions, smart pocket feel, pressure evasion, off-platform prowess, clinical ball placement and a fearless aggression to attack all levels of the field, all of which was projected as the ideal recipe to a starting NFL quarterback, eventually. Turnover issues stemming from inconsistent accuracy and poor decision-making fuelled some concerns, but for a while Darnold would loom as the leading choice.

"I don't think any team should tank their season because of me," said Darnold in 2017.

Sure about that?

Darnold landed with the New York Jets as the third overall pick at the 2018 NFL Draft, featuring among five first-round quarterbacks. Baker Mayfield went to Cleveland at No 1 overall, Darnold followed at No 3, the Buffalo Bills selected Josh Allen at No 7, the Arizona Cardinals drafted Josh Rosen at No 10 and Lamar Jackson was the 32nd overall pick to the Baltimore Ravens. It is a cohort that now includes three MVP awards courtesy of Jackson (2019, 2023) and Allen (2024), but it will be Darnold who becomes the first to start at a Super Bowl this weekend.

He recently made the point of noting he was actually the first of the lot to go to a Super Bowl when he served as backup with the San Francisco 49ers on the road to Super Bowl LVIII, where they were beaten by Mahomes' Kansas City Chiefs at the end of the 2023 season.

At the age of 21 years and 97 days he became the youngest quarterback to start a season opener in the Super Bowl era on his full Jets debut in 2018. His first-ever regular-season pass would end in a pick-six by Quandre Diggs, before he threw two touchdowns to lead the Jets to a 48-17 win over the Detroit Lions. That might have been the first warning of the ensuing career fluctuation.

The ball security chinks at college suggested he had probably been in need of some understudy time with which to adjust his eyes to NFL coverages on the sidelines. Instead he had been tossed into a team nursing the wounds of back-to-back 5-11 seasons under Todd Bowles, who was fired following Darnold's rookie campaign.

By November 2018 he was admitting to "playing stupid" after four interceptions in a 13-6 loss to the Miami Dolphins, finishing the season 239 of 414 passing (57.7 per cent) for 2,865 yards and 17 touchdowns to 15 interceptions as the Jets finished 4-12. By September 2019 he became the unwelcome butt of jokes after a comically in-your-face ESPN graphic announced he was 'out indefinitely' with mononucleosis, the 'kissing disease'. Just a month later he was captured admitting to "seeing ghosts" on the sideline as he threw four interceptions in a 35-0 blowout defeat to the Patriots, finishing his sophomore campaign with 13 picks and 11 fumbles.

Cue the barrage of write-off scoffing, the league chuckling at the sight of another Jets mishap amid their four-decade-long quest to find an answer at quarterback amid football's longest active playoff drought. The Jets had Jets'ed again, and how quickly Darnold's college spark had been snuffed out.

"I almost forgot about it, so thanks. No, you're good," said Darnold, reminded of his 'ghost' comment following Seattle's NFC Championship Game victory. "I think for me, there was a lot that I didn't know back then, so I'm just going to continue to learn and grow in this great game."

A sinking ship had been anchored deeper by Bowles' successor Adam Gase as the Jets slumped to 7-9 and then 2-14 across his two seasons in charge. Darnold posted just 2,208 passing yards and nine touchdowns to 11 interceptions in 2020, during which Jets fans were already banging the 'Tank for Trevor' drum as Clemson's consensus No 1 pick Trevor Lawrence prepared to enter the NFL.

The Jets went and Jets'ed it up, anyway. Having sat with a 0-13 record and in pole position to clinch the No 1 pick, Gase's team conjured a 'huh?!' of an upset against the Los Angeles Rams to ultimately cost themselves top spot. It would pave the way for the Jacksonville Jaguars to claim their new lusciously-locked face of the franchise.

Through three seasons Darnold had gone 13-25 as a starter while throwing 39 interceptions and coughing up 20 fumbles. He was subsequently traded to the Carolina Panthers, coming off a 5-11 maiden campaign under Matt Rhule, for a 2021 sixth-round pick and 2022 second and fourth-round selections.

Fittingly, it will be Darnold's replacement in New York who takes as much inspiration as anybody from his predecessor's career resurrection. The Jets turned to Zach Wilson with the No 2 pick after missing out on Lawrence, under the spell - like plenty of analysts and observers at the time - of the BYU quarterback's arm talent in pad-less, coverage-devoid Pro Days. Wilson endured his own miserable Jets chapter, and has since hopped around backup roles with the Denver Broncos and Miami Dolphins. A time, an opportunity will come again, Darnold would tell him.

In hindsight, the prospect of a recovery under Rhule was a non-starter. Darnold started 11 games in his first season with the Panthers, a fractured scapula derailing the second half of the year as he finished 4-7 after throwing nine touchdowns to 13 interceptions while sharing time with Cam Newton under center. He was then resigned to a backup role behind old Draft class mate Mayfield and started just six games in 2022 before becoming a free agent.

For all the promise he displayed late in the season with the Panthers, Darnold's career was in a hole of increasing depth and with a ladder missing key rungs amid his search for an escape-meets-break. But his fortune was about to turn, and he was about to gain his best education since entering the NFL.

Along came Kyle Shanahan, the 49ers and an overdue exposure to real NFL offense. Darnold returned to California, leapfrogged Trey Lance and spent the season as backup to Brock Purdy while 2022's Mr Irrelevant led his side to the Super Bowl. Darnold started just one game, but even then his time in the Bay might be deemed as beneficial as anything he had seen over the previous five seasons.

"I mean, Steve Young took a while to get going, and he's one of the best quarterbacks of all time," Shanahan told local media in San Francisco upon his arrival. "I don't like to compare anyone to Steve, cause of how good he is, but why can't Sam be like that? He's got that type of ability. He is that type of person. And I'm just pumped that we could get a talented guy like him here."

Come 2024 Darnold officially arrived. The Minnesota Vikings signed him to a one-year deal in view of providing a veteran mind with which to support J.J. McCarthy, only to see their first-round rookie quarterback go down injured in preseason - it was time. Darnold started the entire season, thriving under head coach Kevin O'Connell, purring in unison with Justin Jefferson and converting the momentum of Brian Flores' defense while posting a 14-3 record to steer Minnesota to the playoffs.

Football could hardly believe what had unfolded. It had seen Geno Smith emerge from the darkness in Seattle, it had seen a reborn Baker Mayfield punish Cleveland for casting him aside, and it was seeing Darnold play his way towards millions of dollars. A prolific campaign, though, would end in a nine-sack defeat to the Rams on his postseason debut as ghosts of the past reared their ugly head. Had it all been a coach-fuelled one-off, Darnold the beneficiary of O'Connell wizardry? Division, uncertainty, apprehension was both the result of Darnold's early years and the extent at which entire eras and jobs hinge on making a decision at quarterback.

In the end, recently-fired Vikings General Manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and O'Connell risked putting their faith in McCarthy upon his return from injury as free agent Darnold instead headed to Seattle on a three-year $100.5m deal. The Seahawks themselves had meanwhile been met by some outside confusion after allowing Smith to depart in light of his own comeback trail. Turns out John Schneider got it spot on.

As the Seahawks gear up for the Super Bowl, the Vikings face an offseason in which to debrief over McCarthy's turbulent season. That apparent debrief just saw Adofo-Mensah lose his job.

"Having a quarterback that's already had a season under his belt with us, knew the plays, knew the playbook, knew the players. Of course, throwing to me, Jordan Addison, T.J. Hockenson, I definitely felt like we would've done better," Vikings receiver Jefferson told USA Today recently.

Yikes.

Darnold just became the second quarterback in NFL history to record back-to-back 14-win seasons, behind a certain Tom Brady. He finished the regular season 323 of 477 passing (67.7 per cent) for 4,048 yards (fifth-most in the NFL) and 25 touchdowns to 14 interceptions in the No 3-ranked scoring offense in football.

By mid-season he was in the thick of MVP contention while executing a balanced and high-powered Klint Kubiak attack in which Jaxon Smith-Njigba would announce himself among the NFL's premier wide receivers; Darnold was shredding teams with throws off-platform and from play-action, he was layering passes with expert touch and daring his arm talent against dangerous windows, he was dealing from funky angles and navigating the pocket with eyes-down-field poise and feel. Combined with Mike Macdonald's throttling defense, it would help Seattle clinch the NFC West and the No 1 seed as the most complete team in football. With an unflattering tally of turnovers came one of the leading threats of explosive plays in the league as Darnold flipped fields by way of Smith-Njigba and mid-season addition Rashid Shaheed.

"We know that he's capable of doing great things and more than we can think of. So we're going to ride with Sam, and that's my dog. Whatever he needs, I got him," Smith-Njigba told Sky Sports.

And yet the league wondered if it was still for real, whether an implosion was pending, whether the clock was running out. The true exam awaited in the NFC Championship Game against the Rams, who had intercepted him four times in the Seahawks' 21-19 defeat earlier in the season. In fact, the Rams had sacked him 19 times and forced him to turn the ball over eight times over the past two seasons alone.

Darnold decided to turn in the performance of his life, throwing for 346 yards and three touchdowns - all of which came when under pressure - in a turnover-free outing. Matthew Stafford played out of his skin, but Darnold never blinked on the biggest stage of his career.

"Sam Darnold has had the best game of his season," said Tom Brady on commentary. "Today, he has been absolutely flawless in his decision making and so accurate. There is nothing better than playing your best game in the biggest moment of your life."

Darnold is playing like the quarterback he always knew he could be, at the level he always believed he could reach. That he has retained the same pre-Draft confidence in his ability after five years spent in New York and Carolina is quite the quarterbacking miracle.

"We love Sam," safety Julian Love told Sky Sports. "He's special. He got a bad rap early in his career on a bad team - this is not that.

"He shows up. He works hard. He gets in early. He leaves late. He's a good teammate. He's a good leader for us. We have Sam's back to the fullest."

All arrows pointed towards journeyman territory, another Jets victim and one of many high Draft picks that had slumped to irrelevance.

He hasn't been a bystander or a puppet, but instead a pilot to Kubiak's offense. And he is still also just 28, with his most prosperous years potentially ahead.

It is the Patriots, against whom he saw those pesky ghosts, that stand between him and one of the greatest stories in Super Bowl folklore.

Watch the New England Patriots against the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl 60 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California on Sunday February 8, with coverage under way at 10pm live on Sky Spots NFL ahead of kick-off at approximately 11.30pm.