So, you might be wondering, just who is Sam Darnold, the man who will soon become the 25th starting quarterback in the Seahawks’ 50th year as a franchise?
You can find the basic facts in his media guide bio.
That he’s 28 years old and grew up in San Clemente, Calif., as part of a sports-mad family.
That his grandfather, Dick Hammer, played basketball at USC — where Darnold played quarterback — and was a member of the USA volleyball team at the 1964 Olympics before becoming an actor, appearing in the 1970s TV show “Emergency” and in print ads as the Marlboro Man.
read more seahawks season preview coverage
Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald walks through the tunnel before the start of a game against the Kansas City Chiefs Friday, August 15, 2025 in Seattle. 230762
Get to know Sam Darnold, the biggest unknown for Seahawks fans in 2025
How new scene with Seahawks fits for Cooper Kupp
How Seahawks can prove modest expectations are wrong and win NFC West | Mike Vorel
If Seahawks contend in 2025, it will be because this happened in 2024 | Matt Calkins
Five key questions the Seahawks face this season | Analysis
What Seahawks are planning on offense under coordinator Klint Kubiak
That his father, Mike, was an offensive lineman at the University of Redlands before settling into a career as a middle-school physical education teacher; his mother, Chris, a volleyball player at Long Beach City College; and his older sister, Franki, a volleyball player at Rhode Island.
“Everybody was into athletics,” Sam Darnold says. “It was almost like you had to play sports growing up.”
Not that he ever complained.
Darnold became such an avid sports fan that he admits a little sheepishly he had a TV in his room growing up and would leave it on ESPN pretty much continuously.
“I would watch ‘SportsCenter’ at night every single night, that rerun hour that was on there,” he said, citing Kenny Mayne, Neil Everett and Stan Verrett as his favorites. “That was the routine for me as a kid.”
That led to him majoring in communications at USC.
“I kind of dreamed about doing (sportscasting) someday if the whole sports thing, the whole athlete thing, didn’t work out,” he said.
There are also clues he gave during a recent interview, one of many he conducted during training camp as media searched to find out as much as they could about the new face of the Seahawks franchise.
That not long ago, he read the book “Tribe” by Sebastian Junger and appreciated its theme that, as he says, “humans are supposed to be in tribes. That’s how our species evolved, and he kind of talks about how people are kind of on their phones all the time now and how that’s just not good for you.”
That his favorite movie is “Shawshank Redemption.”
“Has been now for probably 15 years,” he says. “It just can’t leave that one spot. There is just something about it.”
That when it comes to music: “My Spotify is all over the place. … I’m a mixed bag.” But if forced to name a favorite, he cites the alt-rock group Kings of Leon. Darnold says he’s not sure they’ve ever recorded a bad song.
Then there’s what his new teammates say.
“Well, based on what I’ve seen, he seems pretty even-keel all the time,” right tackle Abraham Lucas said. “We haven’t had any game action yet, but I have faith in him. I don’t think he’s the type of person to lose his cool or anything like that, so I’m confident in that.”
That description fits the vibe of one of Darnold’s other childhood pastimes — hanging out on nearby beaches with friends, many of whom were part of a local surfing club.
“But I still can’t surf,” Darnold says. ”I can stand up. But I can’t stand up on a board and ride a wave. I grew up boogie boarding. But all my friends surf. I did grow up going to the beach and hanging out down there.”
And there’s this from his new coach, Mike Macdonald:
“What I love about Sam is his consistency. The fact that he’s always trying to help his teammates. There’s cool, subtle ways on how he goes about his business that doesn’t scream, ‘I’m a superstar quarterback.’
“It means that he cares about his teammates. He’s trying to get it right. He wants the offense to work a certain way. He cares about the precision, how we operate. He cares about the details. Great competitor, but he does it his way, which is cool. It’s authentic to him.”
Here’s what Seahawks fans really want to know: Who will Sam Darnold become?
Will he force his way onto the Mount Rushmore of Seahawks starting quarterbacks — Russell Wilson, Matt Hasselbeck, Dave Krieg and Jim Zorn, a quartet that combined to start 283 of 402 regular-season wins and all 17 postseason wins?
Or will his tenure finish somewhere in the mix of the other 20 quarterbacks who have started a game for the Seahawks, some of whom had some individual success but none of whom ever won a playoff game?
Most Read Sports Stories
▮ ▮ ▮
Before addressing that question, it might be worth quickly revisiting the unexpectedly jagged road Darnold took to get to Seattle.
A three-sport athlete (baseball, football, basketball) most of his life, he thought basketball might be his future for a while.
“I could have gotten to a certain point, but 6-3 1/2 is only going to get you so much in basketball unless your name is Steph Curry,” said Darnold, who is listed by the Seahawks at 6-foot-3, 225 pounds. “… After my sophomore year, I started getting offers for football. I had gotten a small offer to play basketball and then I got an offer from Utah to play football and I was like, ‘The writing’s on the wall here.’”
Nearby USC was always a favorite, in part because of his family history and that his favorite player growing up was Reggie Bush.
His first real football memory, he says, is taking off for a run as a quarterback for a Pop Warner team in third grade and during the middle of it trying to make moves like Bush.
He recently saw a video of it and said, “It kind of reminded me of just how special that (experience) was for me growing up.’’
Asked if his parents took the video, he laughs.
“They weren’t huge into that,” he says. “My dad coached the O-line, so he didn’t even coach me; and my mom was probably too busy socializing with the other moms.”
That story typifies how Darnold’s parents encouraged him to play sports — any and all — but let him find his own way.
Far from being groomed to be a quarterback, Darnold also played linebacker until his junior year of high school.
“I loved playing linebacker,” Darnold said. “I always had a huge passion for playing defense and just hitting people and making plays. That always kind of fired me up.”
After signing with USC, he redshirted behind senior Cody Kessler as a freshman in 2015. Darnold became the starter the following season when former Skyline High star Max Browne struggled at the beginning of the season.
One of his breakthrough moments came, interestingly enough, a few miles from the VMAC where he led the Trojans to an upset over an undefeated and fourth-ranked UW team at Husky Stadium late in the 2016 season.
That got No. 3 USC to the Rose Bowl, where Darnold threw for five TDs, accounted for 473 yards and led the Trojans on a drive that resulted in a game-winning field goal as time ran out in a win against No. 7 Penn State.
And that put him near the top of all mock drafts for 2018 and those predictions came true when the Jets took him No. 3 overall.
The Jets are where careers go to either die or never begin — their only Pro Bowl QB since 1993 is Brett Favre in 2008.
His second season showed some promise — a 7-6 record in his 13 starts.
A shoulder injury derailed things in 2020 and when a meandering team finished 2-14 and Adam Gase was fired, the Jets traded Darnold to Carolina rather than have to commit to a contract extension.
Carolina, rebuilding under Matt Rhule, wasn’t a better situation.
Still, Darnold threw for 888 yards in leading the Panthers to a 3-0 start in 2021 before a few close losses brought Carolina back to earth.
The Panthers were 4-5 when Darnold suffered a shoulder injury that sidelined him six weeks as Carolina finished 5-12.
The Panthers brought in Baker Mayfield to compete the following season, and Mayfield won the job heading into the season, and Darnold suffered a high ankle sprain that sidelined him two months.
By the time he returned, Rhule had been fired (after a 1-4 start) and Mayfield was benched after an injury of his own and eventually released.
Darnold returned to lead the Panthers to a 4-2 record in their final six games under interim coach Steve Wilks, including a 30-24 win at Lumen Field over the Seahawks. He had a seven-to-three TD-to-interception ratio.
At age 26, his career seemed on the brink and his best offer the following year was from the 49ers on a one-year, $4.5 million deal to serve as insurance in case Brock Purdy had to miss time because of an elbow injury. Purdy made it back, and Darnold started only one game as the 49ers advanced to the Super Bowl.
On the surface it seemed a humbling comedown.
But Darnold says, “It’s what I signed up for and I learned a lot.”
That led to another one-year deal in 2024 with the Vikings, who had drafted former Michigan star J.J. McCarthy to be their starter.
When McCarthy suffered a knee injury in the preseason, Darnold took over and did what few thought he still could, throwing 35 touchdown passes as the Vikings went 14-3.
Still, a late-season fade — one TD and 11 sacks taken in blowout losses to the Lions in a game for the top playoff seed and the Rams in a wild-card playoff game — led to questions about how real his revival was.
”You get all the way to that point, and you have the season that we had offensively as a team, and at the end of the day only one team can win the Super Bowl,” Darnold said. “Unfortunately we weren’t that team. But I learned a ton from those last two games, especially, playing Detroit and playing L.A.
“… It’s just continuing to learn. Learning things about yourself, what they did schematically, and yeah, that’s basically all you can do is just learn from those experiences.”
When the Vikings decided to commit to McCarthy in the offseason rather than offer Darnold a new deal, he became a free agent.
Darnold says every stop offered something valuable, be it lessons in life and football, or in Carolina meeting Katie Hoofnagle, an avid soccer player and South Carolina grad, during his second year with the Panthers. The two became engaged in July.
“I’ve been through a lot and I’ve come out on the other side,” he said. “And I think that’s just the biggest thing, being able to trust myself — trust myself and always trying to find ways to get better.”
▮ ▮ ▮
Darnold didn’t really know Seattle might be in his future until about the same time as everyone else — when the Seahawks traded Geno Smith to the Raiders late in the afternoon of March 7 with contract talks at a standstill.
The Seahawks, who maybe wished they’d traded Russell Wilson a year earlier than they did, decided not to wait this time, dealing Smith and knowing they could get Darnold — who had played for new Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak during his year with the 49ers (Kubiak was offensive passing game specialist).
The Seahawks sealed the deal with a three-year contract worth as much as $100.5 million, the two sides coming to an agreement less than 72 hours after Smith was traded.
The Seahawks hedged their bets as the deal includes only $37.5 million guaranteed, and none after this season.
That means Darnold is still in a prove-it situation with the Seahawks.
His predecessor, Smith, was in a similar boat when he succeeded Wilson following a similar career path. Smith won over doubters by leading the Seahawks to an unlikely wild-card playoff berth in 2022 — joining only Wilson, Hasselbeck, Krieg and Jon Kitna as quarterbacks who have gotten the Seahawks to the postseason.
The Seahawks never got beyond that with Smith.
The Seahawks are banking that Darnold can pick up where he left off in Minnesota — he finished 10th in NFL MVP voting — and paired with a better running game and emerging defense can take them even further than Smith.
Beating the Seahawks in Seattle two of the past three years, including throwing a late touchdown pass to rally the Vikings to a 27-24 win last December, gave Darnold immediate credibility with teammates.
That he was already familiar with Kubiak’s scheme has helped him earn even more.
“Well the cool part about Sammy was since he’s gotten here he’s just kind of been the dude,” receiver Jake Bobo said. “… To have a guy like Sam, as physically gifted as he is, kind of mentally where he’s at right now has been huge for our growth as an offense.”
It adds up to Darnold seeming to finally be in the perfect position to live up to all the hype that greeted his arrival in the NFL in 2018.
He’s not a rookie anymore as he’s a veteran of 73 starts.
At age 28, he’s in the prime of his career.
And he’s coming to a team that seems positioned for success, coming off a 10-win season with an emerging defense under second-year coach Macdonald.
Darnold says he isn’t thinking about storylines or legacies as his Seahawks career begins.
“It’s going to sound really corny,” Darnold says, appearing apologetic as he speaks. “But I just try to win the day. I just try to do everything I can to be a good football player and a good person every single day, and I just know when you stack everything up day-after-day, week-after-week, month-after-month, all the sudden when the season is over you can look back and be proud about it.”
Bob Condotta: bcondotta@seattletimes.com. Bob Condotta is a sports reporter at The Seattle Times who primarily covers the Seahawks but also dabbles in other sports. He has worked at The Times since 2002, reporting on University of Washington Husky football and basketball for his first 10 years at the paper before switching to the Seahawks in 2013.