No matter what Seahawks’ Sam Darnold does at Titans, he’s got ‘Super Cade’
Sam Darnold led the Seahawks to a hot start with some of the NFL’s best passing.
Last weekend he threw four interceptions, tying the most of his eight-year pro career. Seattle lost at the Los Angeles Rams to fall out of first place in the NFC West.
Cade Spinello doesn’t care about any of that. All the kid they call “Super Cade” cares about is Darnold is his friend.
The Seahawks quarterback, now 28, met “Super Cade” when Darnold was in high school in San Clemente, California. It was 2014. Darnold was a star quarterback attending the Elite 11 camp for top high-school prospects. His quarterback coach then, and now, Jordan Palmer, was on the Elite 11 staff.
Palmer also worked with the Jessie Rees Foundation, a pediatric cancer non-profit based in Irvine, Orange County, near where Darnold grew up.
The Jessie Rees Foundation’s motto is an acronym to live by: NEGU.
Never, Ever Give Up.
“Super Cade,” then 6 years old, was one of the kids in the Jessie Rees Foundation when Coach Palmer pointed Darnold to it and Cade at the Elite 11 camp 11 years ago. The foundation is named after Cade’s friend he met during chemotherapy together. Jessie Rees died in 2012, at the age of 12 following her 10-month fight through two brain tumors. In 2011, when Cade was 3 in his native southern California, he developed vision problems. Doctors eventually found he had a brain tumor. As Yogi Roth described in a 2017 feature for Pac-12 Networks filmed at Cade and his parents’ home, “Super Cade” had two brain surgeries within three weeks. Doctors told his parents Mike and Erin their little boy was days from perhaps dying in his sleep.
After the second surgery, he had a major stroke. It paralyzed the right side of his body. He was legally blind. He needed major rehabilitation and therapy, including to regain his ability to walk, talk and see.
Five-year-old “Super Cade” called his rehabilitation center at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles “superhero school.”
“That’s, like, where superheroes get their powers,” Cade told Roth three years later.
Darnold never forgot Cade Spinello. Sunday, when his Seahawks (7-3) play at the Tennessee Titans (1-9) in Nashville (10 a.m., FOX television, channel 13 locally), Darnold will be wearing black and sky-blue cleats with “NEGU” scripted on one side and “Jessie Rees Foundation” on the other.
For “Super Cade.”
It’s Darnold’s participation in the NFL’s annual My Cleats My Cause weekend. “He’s an incredible person.” Darnold said this week of “Super Cade.”
The quarterback is among multiple Seahawks who will be wearing cleats honoring kids in the Titans game Sunday.
Coach Mike Macdonald is wearing white shoes with red and pink accents and inscribed with the logo of the RYR-1 Foundation, a non-profit that supports rare diseases, particularly, muscular dystrophy.
“My awesome nephew, Lucas, has a form of muscular dystrophy, and he’s doing great,” Macdonald said Friday of his sister’s 9-year-old son.
“Proud to wear the shoes, and I love the fact that the NFL does this, gives our players and our staff an opportunity to support causes that we love and want to bring awareness to. It’ll be good, it’ll be exciting.”
Tight end AJ Barner will be wearing blue, high-top cleats with a drawing of a waving Ronald Macdonald on the heel and the logo of the Ronald McDonald House charity, a red house with a white heart inside. Ronald McDonald Houses provide places for families of critically ill children, often from far away, to stay near the medical facilities where their kids are getting long-term care.
Barner says he’s going to be visiting one soon; there is a Ronald McDonald House across the street from Seattle Children’s hospital. “I’ve got a great relationship with McDonald’s, and all the work that they do in the community is important to me,” Barner, the 23-year-old native of Aurora, Ohio, who played at Indiana and Michigan said. “It seems like every city has a McDonald’s on their corner, so it’s cool to work with an organization like that, that cares about kids and has a direct impact with children and their families.”
Sam Darnold and “Super Cade”
No matter what happens in Tennessee Sunday — he rebounds from the Rams loss to get Seattle to 8-3, or the NFL co-leader in turnovers turns the ball over again — Darnold can look down to his feet and think of Cade.
And of NEGU. Maybe we all should.
Darnold and Super Cade were an unlikely pair. Cade became a gigantic UCLA fan. Then-Bruins coach Jim Mora, the Seahawks coach in 2009 and Washington Huskies player in the early 1980s, had Cade at UCLA’s practices. Cade was in the Bruins locker room and at home games in the Rose Bowl.
Darnold was the star quarterback at USC, UCLA’s cross-town archrival. Bruins generally don’t pal around with Trojans, and vice versa.
Cade’s dad Mike, a grade-school teacher and football coach who wrote a superhero book based on his son to give hope to children fighting cancer, told Roth in 2017: “Cade would say, ‘I want Sam to throw for five touchdowns — and then lose by two points.”
Darnold loved it. And Cade.
“He really touched my heart with his story and how he battled, and how NEGU really helped him get through some really, really tough times battling cancer,” Darnold said.
“It really hit home for me when I was in high school.”
USC stardom, third-overall pick in the NFL draft, eight NFL seasons and a $100 million Seahawks contract later, Darnold remains close to Cade and the Jessie Rees Foundation.
“I feel like I’ve developed a good relationship with the people there and a lot of the kids that NEGU tries to help throughout that whole process,” Darnold said.
“It’s a foundation for children fighting cancer and they just try to spread joy for these kids that are fighting cancer, doing everything that they can. They make these things called joy jars, which they deliver to the hospitals. There’s a ton of cool little toys in there for kids to play with, coloring books, and all sorts of things.
“Then they do a lot of great things to help raise money for the cause, as well. They are people I’ve been working with since high school and very happy to represent them as my cause.”
Darnold’s intends to expand his scope and brighten the days of kids in his new NFL home over the next few weeks. He intends to visit perhaps Seattle Children’s hospital during the holiday season.
“Hopefully these next couple weeks, especially around the holidays, we’ll get to a hospital and try to impact some of the kiddos’ lives,” he said.
This story was originally published November 22, 2025 at 2:10 PM.
