Bobo added that Darnold's familiarity with this style of offense—he spent 2023 in San Francisco where current Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak was then the 49ers' passing game coordinator—has been beneficial to everyone else in the offense.
"He's a guy that I can go to, that Coop (Kupp) can go to, that all the receivers can go to if we have a question about what we're trying to do with different route stems, timing stuff," Bobo said. "So to have a guy like Sam, as physically gifted as he is, mentally where he's at right now, has been huge for our growth as an offense."
For Darnold, that one drive, which featured a heavy dose of Zach Charbonnet and the running game, was a good start even if the offense is still a work in progress.
"The way we were able to run the football like we talked about, mixing in keepers and play-action and even some dropback there on second down early in the drive, it was our style of football," Darnold said. "It's the style we wanted to create in OTAs and even training camp. We started to find our identity that way. Can kind of see to come to life. Like you just mentioned it's August, so there is still a long ways to go in terms of where we want to be as an offense. It was really good to get out there and just take the field as a unit the way we wanted to."
Darnold came away from his first game action with the Seahawks impressed not just with the operation of the offense, and a dominant run game in particular, but also with the atmosphere created by fans.
"First of all, it was awesome to just get out there in front of the 12s in that atmosphere," he said. "I felt like that was kind of a perfect atmosphere. Felt like it was almost November, December already out there in the rain. It was an incredible atmosphere too. Again, like I said last week I think to you guys, just the way the fans came out during the preseason game, it's incredible to see. Football-wise I think offensive line dominated really most the game, which is always great to see. That first group, that second group, even the third and fourth group went out there and played really well together. It felt really good to get out there in front of the 12s."