Sam Darnold Isn't Happy With How He Played in the Super Bowl. That's Good News for Seattle

He Won It All and Still Wasn't Satisfied

Sam Darnold just led the Seahawks to a Super Bowl title in his first year in Seattle. Ask him how he played in that game, though, and he won't sugarcoat it. "I didn't play great in the Super Bowl," he said heading into 2026 training camp. "I missed way too many throws."

That kind of self-scouting isn't an act. It's the same edge that got Darnold to Seattle in the first place, after a career spent bouncing around the league before he finally landed somewhere built to make him better.

A Quiet Camp, By Design

Last summer brought Darnold a real quarterback competition. This summer, there isn't one. Drew Lock is still the backup, rookie Jalen Milroe is developing behind him, and camp is about sharpening what already works rather than settling who starts. That's not something a defending champion should take for granted. Most title teams spend camp fighting complacency. Seattle gets to spend it getting better.

Seventh Play-Caller, Same Old Answers

New offensive coordinator Brian Fleury arrives from San Francisco as the seventh different play-caller of Darnold's career, the kind of number that usually signals instability, not stability. Except the scheme overlap made the transition close to seamless. "A lot of the same stuff, just a couple different wrinkles," Darnold said of Fleury's West Coast principles. Coach Mike Macdonald isn't worried either. He's watched Darnold absorb bigger changes than a new play-caller running a familiar system.

Circled on the Calendar

Seattle opens its title defense on September 9 with a rematch of Super Bowl LX against the same New England team it just beat. Everywhere else on the roster, camp storylines will center on receiver depth and whether a championship-caliber defense can hold up over another 17 games. But the season opens with Darnold, and how he looks in that rematch will say a lot about whether last year was the start of something or a one-year outlier.

Judging by how he talked about his own Super Bowl performance, betting against him would be a mistake.