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Perhaps when Tom Brady watches Sam Darnold, he still sees the quarterback Bill Belichick once left seeing ghosts.
That would explain the criticism Brady directed at the Seattle Seahawks signal-caller as he and Kevin Burkhardt called San Francisco’s 32-29 win over the defending Super Bowl champions on Sunday, an afternoon in which Darnold completed 18 of 29 passes for 195 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions while taking five sacks. It does far less to explain the open contempt Brady showed the 29-year-old after a late hit sent him tumbling toward his own bench in the second quarter.
With San Francisco up 14-10 in the second quarter, Darnold tucked the ball and scrambled five yards toward the Seattle sideline, stepping out of bounds near the San Francisco 47 a split second before Dre Greenlaw arrived at full speed and drove him toward the Seahawks bench. The flag came out, Seattle’s sideline converged on Greenlaw, and within moments the 49ers linebacker had escalated a 15-yard penalty into an ejection by head-butting a helmetless Ernest Jones IV.
Brady, meanwhile, was in the booth defending Greenlaw tooth and nail and accusing Darnold of selling the contact.
Really surprised Tom Brady was defending the Dre Greenlaw hit tbh
— Football Analysis (@FBallAnalysisYT) October 11, 2026
“I don’t think that’s an illegal hit at all,” Brady said. “I know they might call a penalty, but Dre Greenlaw’s on a full sprint to make sure Darnold’s not gaining anywhere close to the first down mark, which is exactly what Darnold’s doing. And then it’s a little nudge out of bounds and Darnold with the acting.”
Tom Brady hates Sam Darnold
noted
“Darnold with the acting” https://t.co/1azVGaDElx
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) October 11, 2026
So why the open contempt for a quarterback who won a Super Bowl eight months ago?
Perhaps it goes back to March 2025 when Darnold was coming off a 14-win season in Minnesota and was the best quarterback on the open market, while the Raiders were coming off a year of rotating Gardner Minshew and Aidan O’Connell under center. Instead of chasing Darnold, Las Vegas traded for Geno Smith, and Seattle replaced Smith with Darnold on a three-year, $100.5 million deal. Michael Silver reported in The Athletic in June that the franchise’s most famous minority owner was against the idea, and Colin Cowherd repeated the claim on his show in November.
“There were reports that Brady didn’t want Sam Darnold in Vegas…it seems to me Sammy is pretty good.” – Colin Cowherd https://t.co/0pz9UiUajN
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 6, 2025
Or maybe it’s because Brady was the opposing quarterback on some of Darnold’s worst days in New York, including the October 2019 Monday night game, when Darnold threw four interceptions and was picked up by an ESPN mic admitting he was seeing ghosts. Maybe he’s learned more than the rest of us from Klint Kubiak, Darnold’s offensive coordinator during Seattle’s Super Bowl run, whom Brady helped bring to Las Vegas as head coach in February. And it bears mentioning that Brady grew up in San Mateo idolizing Joe Montana and the 49ers.
Whatever the reason, Brady used the moment to lament how soft the league has gotten, which is an odd complaint from a quarterback who benefited from quarterback protection rules as much as anyone, including the limits on low hits the league put in place after he tore his ACL in 2008. Hitting a quarterback after he’s out of bounds was a penalty when Brady entered the league in 2000, and it was still one when he left it in 2023.
“Football has changed so much,” Brady said. “I know it’s a little late as that foot comes down, but I like that Niners are trying — ooh my goodness, I didn’t see that.”
What Brady hadn’t seen was Greenlaw driving his helmet into the bare face of Ernest Jones IV, a head-butt that left the Seattle linebacker bleeding and sent Greenlaw to the locker room with the third ejection of his career. Officials didn’t throw a flag for the head-butt, but as Tom Pelissero noted, a new rule empowers the league office to eject players for non-football acts regardless. Once Brady saw the head-butt, he had no problem calling it out, but he didn’t walk back his suggestion that Darnold was acting.
Just two weeks ago, Ryen Russillo praised Brady for being critical without being nasty, and that ability has helped vault him into the conversation for the best game analyst in the business. But Brady still struggles to conceal his feelings about quarterbacks he doesn’t particularly respect. He did it with Daniel Jones, and on Sunday his disdain was conspicuous enough that John Middlekauff, whose 3 & Out podcast operates under Cowherd’s The Volume umbrella, arrived at the same verdict as Warren Sharp.
“Brady hates Darnold,” Middlekauff wrote.
Brady wasn’t exactly pulling punches elsewhere in the broadcast either, chiding the Super Bowl-winning quarterback for a hospital pass to Rashid Shaheed. He’s entitled to be critical, and a two-interception, five-sack afternoon gives him plenty of material. But few quarterbacks ever lobbied officials for roughing calls as relentlessly as Brady did, so hearing him wave off Darnold’s reaction to a hit that drew a flag as theater was a bit rich. It’s even harder to take at face value from the Raiders minority owner who didn’t want Darnold in the first place.
Darnold long ago stopped seeing ghosts. Whether Brady will ever stop seeing one when he looks at Darnold remains to be seen.