The Seahawks have their new quarterback.
Can he duplicate his one, wondrous season he just had in Minnesota?
Seattle and Sam Darnold, the consensus top quarterback in this year’s NFL free-agent market, have reached agreement on a three-year contract. That is according to multiple reports Monday morning.
The deal for the 27-year-old Darnold, who is coming off a 4,300-yard passing season with 35 touchdowns and his first career Pro Bowl selection for the 14-3 Minnesota Vikings, includes $55 million guaranteed. It could be worth up to $100.5 million through the 2027 season. That’s per ESPN’s Adam Schefter, The Athletic’s Dianna Russini and others.
The Seahawks have spent $155 million in the last 24 hours to get Darnold plus re-sign Ernest Jones and Jarran Reed for their defense. That’s the second-most money spent on free agents in the league this year (to New England). Seattle has guaranteed $80 million of that money to Darnold, Jones and Reed.
The Seahawks announced Reed re-signed on Monday. That deal is reportedly for three years and up to $25 million for the 32-year-old defensive tackle.
Darnold is seven years younger than Geno Smith, Seattle’s starter the last three seasons.
Darnold is reuniting his new Seahawks offensive coordinator and play caller Klint Kubiak. Kubiak was San Francisco’s passing-game coordinator when Darnold was a backup for the 49ers in 2023.
His signing will become official Wednesday, the first day of free agency and the new NFL year. He’s going from $10 million last season with Minnesota to a raise of $23.5 million more per season from Seattle.
Darnold’s agreement came three days after the Seahawks agreed to trade Smith, their two-time Pro Bowl quarterback, to Pete Carroll’s Las Vegas Raiders.
General manager John Schneider and coach Mike Macdonald made that trade after they offered what league sources said was $35 million-$40 million per year on an extension to keep Smith in Seattle beyond his contract ended with the 2025 season. Smith wanted more, upwards of $45 million per year.
Rather than wait days for a counteroffer that never came, Schneider quickly pivoted. He traded Smith to the coach that revived his career in Seattle in 2022 after the Seahawks traded Russell Wilson to Denver that spring.
Darnold was Schneider’s target post-Smith from the moment Smith refused Seattle’s contract offer early last week. Macdonald and Kubiak believe Darnold’s ability to throw quickly and on the run fits what Kubiak wants his quarterback to do in the Seahawks’ new system.
Sam Darnold, Klint Kubiak and under center
Darnold has had top-of-the-league success in pass plays that begin with an increasingly rarity in the NFL: a direct snap under center. Kubiak used that last season as New Orleans’ offensive coordinator more than most OCs in the league do, at least until Saints franchise quarterback Derek Carr got injured.
In his breakout season with the Vikings last season, Darnold under center with play-action and pre-snap motion last season completed 66 of 96 passes for 912 yards, 463 air yards, eight touchdowns, zero interceptions and a passer rating of 126.7. Those numbers are per Doug Farrar of Athlon Sports.
The no interceptions there is critical for Seattle.
Running primarily out of shotgun last season in the system of eventually fired offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, Smith threw 15 interceptions for the Seahawks. That was second-most in the league. He led the NFL with five interceptions in the red zone.
Seattle missed the playoffs for the second consecutive season.
Darnold will sign for an average of up to $33.5 million per season. That’s 18th-highest in the league.
That’s also $11.5 million per year less than Smith was believed to be wanting from the Seahawks.
The risks with Sam Darnold
Schneider trading two franchise quarterbacks in three years comes with hefty risk for the Seahawks’ present. And future.
1. Is Darnold really as good as he was last season?
The native of Capistrano Beach, California, was the third-overall pick out of USC in 2018 by the New York Jets, who traded up three spots in Round 1 to get him out. He threw 28 interceptions while losing 15 of 26 starts in his first two NFL seasons combined. He went 2-10 in his final Jets season of 2020, with nine touchdowns and 11 interceptions.
The Jets traded him to Carolina in the spring of 2021 for three draft picks. His first Panthers season he went 4-7 starting 11 games, with nine touchdowns and 11 interceptions for what a team that finished 5-12 that year.
In 2022 he sustained a high-ankle sprain in the preseason. He was on Carolina’s injured-reserve list the first two months of the regular season. He played in only six games, winning four, for Carolina in 2022. Baker Mayfield and P.J. Walker also started games for Carolina that season.
The Panthers let his contract end after that season. Darnold then signed a one-year contract with San Francisco. He became a backup when an obscure rookie, Brock Purdy, went from the last player picked in the 2022 draft to a 12-4 starter for the 49ers in 2023.
In that 2023 season, Kubiak was San Francisco’s passing-game coordinator who worked closely with Purdy, Darnold and the 49ers quarterbacks.
Darnold signed another one-year deal this time last year, with the Vikings. Minnesota planned to have him backup rookie J.J. McCarthy, the 10th-overall pick in last year’s draft from 2024 national-champion Michigan. But McCarthy sustained a season-ending knee injury last summer. Darnold became the starting quarterback for Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell, a former 49ers offensive coordinator.
Darnold with O’Connell played like the third-overall pick in the draft he was. He led Minnesota to a wondrous, 14-3 season, his first NFL season starting all the games. With Justin Jefferson and the Vikings’ elite wide receivers, Darnold threw the most passes in a season of his career, 545. That was more than 100 throws over his previous career high.
His 35 touchdown passes were 16 more than his previous best in a season, with the Jets in 2019.
But it all ended with a thud.
2. The sacks.
The Seahawks after trading DK Metcalf to Pittsburgh on Sunday and releasing Tyler Lockett last week have nowhere near the receiving depth and talent Darnold had with Jefferson, Jordan Addison and T.J. Hockinson on the Vikings.
With Jefferson blowing past defenders down fields, Darnold threw for 1,023 yards on deep passes (20-plus air yards) last season. That was over 150 yards more than any other quarterback. Darnold also led the NFL in deep completions (28) and tied for the most deep touchdown passes (nine), per NFL NextGen Stats.
Seattle’s weakest area remains its offensive line. Darnold has a penchant for holding onto the ball and getting sacked.
In week 18 in January, the NFC North title was on the line in the regular-season finale. Darnold had the second-highest off-target percentage in a game of his career (34%). He completed just 18 of 41 passes against Detroit’s man-to-man coverage. Though he was sacked just twice, he and his previously soaring Vikings crashed in a 31-9 loss to the Lions. Minnesota became the winningest team in NFL history that did not finish first in its division.
The next week in the first round of the NFC playoffs, the Los Angeles Rams sacked Darnold a league postseason record-tying nine times. Darnold held onto the ball for an average of 4.73 seconds on those sacks. The Rams routed the Vikings, ending Darnold’s time in Minnesota.
For the season, Darnold was sacked 48 times. That was fourth-most in the league. It was two behind Smith, who was sacked two more times than Darnold while dropping back to pass 35 more times.
In 2024 Smith with since-fired Seahawks play caller Ryan Grubb was pressured on 38.5% of his dropbacks. That was even though he had the 11th-quickest time to throw at 2.82 seconds.
Darnold was pressured 37.9% of the time throwing for the Vikings. That was the league’s fourth-highest rate. His time to throw last season was the NFL’s third-longest at 3.08 seconds.
With Kubiak now running Seattle’s offense, that must change for the Seahawks to succeed.
In the four previous NFL seasons Darnold had started at least 11 games, he’d been sacked 30, 33, 35 and 35 times.
After the disappointing finish to this past season, the Vikings decided to let Darnold’s contract lapse. They did not use a franchise tag that could have kept him from free agency. That’s because McCarthy is back healthy.
3. Free agency and the draft.
Depending on how the base salaries and guarantees are structured in the new contract, the agreement with Darnold could be for a 2025 salary-cap charge as low as $12-15 million. That plus the trades of Smith and Metcalf, releasing Lockett plus Dre’Mont Jones, agreeing to re-sign Jones and Reed among the other moves the Seahawks have made in the past week might leave the team with $35-40 million or so in cap space.
The Seahawks can use that to shop in free agency that began Monday. Shop, that is, for guards and center to fix the offensive line.
Schneider and Seattle also now has five choices among the first 92 picks in the draft next month. That’s the 18th-overall choice, the 50th and 52nd picks in round two, and two choices in the third round.
So it’s on to more of what Schneider and his personnel staff have struggled with in recent years, especially on that offensive line.
Talent acquisition.
This story was originally published March 10, 2025 at 11:43 AM.
The News Tribune
Gregg Bell is the Seahawks and NFL writer for The News Tribune. He is a two-time Washington state sportswriter of the year, voted by the National Sports Media Association in January 2023 and January 2019. He started covering the NFL in 2002 as the Oakland Raiders beat writer for The Sacramento Bee. The Ohio native began covering the Seahawks in their first Super Bowl season of 2005. In a prior life he graduated from West Point and served as a tactical intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, so he may ask you to drop and give him 10.