Come on, Sam Darnold — show us and the Seahawks the ghosts are gone
I feel sorry for Sam Darnold. How can you feel sorry for a guy who plays a game for a living, one who is making $33.5 million this year and is guaranteed to make $55 million no matter what?
It’s because we can all relate to what happened to the Seahawks quarterback in a 21-19 loss to the Rams Sunday afternoon.
We don’t know what it’s like to play football at that level, but we all have hurdles or obstacles in our lives too. We keep trying to get over them and extinguish the demons for good. But there they are again, popping up to make us miserable, causing us to wonder if they’ll ever disappear.
I’m no doubt going too far into psycho-babble, but it’s clear that Darnold’s problems are in his head and nowhere else. If I’m Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald, I want him to take the week off from practice and spend his time with a therapist. Or call that person a mental skills coach, that’s fine too.
I don’t need Darnold to talk to the quarterbacks coach this week. He already knows what he did wrong physically, avoiding sacks by throwing ill-advised passes that led to four interceptions.
He needs to discover the reasons why he has a history of failing to shine when the spotlight’s at its brightest and take measures to rectify an issue that reflects poorly on him and could cause the Seahawks’ season to end prematurely.
You know the back story. Darnold led the Vikings to a 14-2 record last year, but the season concluded with a thud. Darnold had a bad performance against the Lions in a game that determined the NFC’s No. 1 seed. Then he followed that up by getting sacked nine times and looking lost in a first-round playoff game against, yep, the Rams.
The Vikings will say they simply wanted to turn their quarterback duties over to J.J. McCarthy, but they also didn’t believe in Darnold enough to keep him, allowing him to go to the Seahawks in free agency.
Darnold’s also a guy who once said he was seeing ghosts when he played for the Jets in a candid admission that apparently continues to haunt him.
I love that his head coach and teammates are firmly behind him, saying that Sam’s still their guy. Linebacker Ernest Jones even said “bleep you” to anyone who criticizes Darnold.
Problem is, there were a lot of anyones who had doubts about Darnold before the Rams’ game, and now there are legions of new anyones who think the original anyones may have been right after all.
And Darnold won’t be able to do anything about it until Dec. 18th when the Seahawks get a return match against the Rams on Thursday Night Football at Lumen Field.
If he plays well this week at Tennessee, all Darnold will get is a “so what, the Titans are terrible.” The next week against Minnesota, I’ll bet he’s spectacular, torching his former team, showing the Vikings they made a mistake in dumping him. But again, from Seahawks’ fans, he’ll get another shrug.
That won’t change in the next game at Atlanta or even the one against the red-hot Colts. Everyone will want to see if Darnold can have a standout effort against the Rams, his nemesis, before acknowledging that he’s finally overcome his mental challenges.
Put yourself in his cleats. Imagine what the next month will be like - however you play won’t matter because questions will persist until you provide answers against the Rams.
And if the Rams win again, then what? You’re a wild-card team or you’re knocked out of the playoffs altogether, and you go from being a long-term franchise quarterback to a place-holder for Jalen Milroe or someone else in the draft. People will maintain that you’re a pretty good quarterback, just not good enough.
The hell of it is, we’ve all seen it, that defense is plenty good enough, Super Bowl-caliber in fact. Darnold knows it too, and as burdens go, this one is heavier than most.
What would you tell him if he was lying on a couch in your office if you were an amateur therapist? Just relax, Sam. Visualize a different outcome, Sam. Trust in yourself, Sam. If necessary, have some edibles before the Rams’ game, Sam.
Even these upcoming lesser opponents will look at what the Rams did and try to harass Darnold in a similar manner. Hopefully they won’t have the defensive horses to pull that off, but if they do, maybe Darnold will have a better plan of how to counter an aggressive pass rush.
I can only compare what he’s going through to golf. When he’s on the tee against a marginal team, Darnold puts it on the green from 195 yards out, clearing the water with ease. Against the Commanders, it’s a beautiful little draw, and look at that, it’s a hole in one!
But against the Rams, he’s Kevin Costner, Tin Cupping his first shot into the water…and the next…and the next…and the next, choking just like everyone thought he would.
Forget about the Seahawks and what’s on the line, on a purely personal level, dammit Sam, come on man, you can do it, give us a Hollywood finish the next time around.
Jim Moore has covered Washington’s sports scene from every angle for multiple news outlets. He appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10 a.m. on Jason Puckett’s podcast at PuckSports.com. He writes a Substack blog at jimmoorethego2guy.substack.com. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) @cougsgo.
This story was originally published November 18, 2025 at 10:11 AM.