Brady HendersonJan 14, 2026, 06:00 AM ETCloseBrady Henderson is a reporter for NFL Nation and covers the Seattle Seahawks for ESPN. He joined ESPN in 2017 after covering the team for Seattle Sports 710-AM.Follow on X
Sherman: Seahawks can win Super Bowl if Darnold is at his best (1:32)Richard Sherman joins “The Rich Eisen Show” to weigh in on the Seahawks’ Super Bowl chances. (1:32)
RENTON, Wash. — The Seattle Seahawks had just introduced Sam Darnold inside a packed auditorium at team headquarters on March 13 when general manager John Schneider, standing in front of reporters in an adjacent hallway, did his best to explain how their quarterback change had come to be.
Six days earlier, Schneider agreed to trade Geno Smith to the Las Vegas Raiders after a brief attempt to sign him to an extension. That led the GM and coach Mike Macdonald to turn their focus to Darnold, a free agent after his breakthrough Pro Bowl season with the Minnesota Vikings.
Ten months later, those two decisions stand near the top of the list of reasons why the Seahawks entered the playoffs as betting favorites to win Super Bowl LX, having claimed the NFC’s No. 1 seed after a 14-3 regular season. Their quest for the franchise’s second Lombardi Trophy begins Saturday (8 p.m. ET, Fox), when they host the San Francisco 49ers at Lumen Field in the divisional round.
How far the Seahawks go in the playoffs will depend largely on whether Darnold can avoid the mistakes that plagued him over the second half of the season. He played well enough — despite finishing with a league-high 20 turnovers — to make the Pro Bowl. He also made some NFL history along the way. Darnold joined Tom Brady (2019-20) as the only quarterback to win at least 14 games in consecutive seasons with different teams.
The Seahawks couldn’t have hoped for much more from Darnold, 28, when they signed him to a three-year, $100.5 million contract to replace Smith, 35.
“We made an offer to Geno, tried to extend him,” Schneider said after his long pause. “It became apparent that we weren’t going to be able to get a deal done. It wasn’t a very long negotiation. So as a staff, we had to be prepared to pivot.”
The paths of the Seahawks and Darnold began to converge in the summer of 2024, when Smith was briefly sidelined during training camp.
That offseason, Smith had seen several other quarterbacks sign extensions worth more than $50 million per year. Smith was entering Year 2 of the three-year, $75 million contract he signed after the 2022 season, when he won NFL Comeback Player of the Year and made the Pro Bowl after spending most of his previous seven seasons as a backup.
Over his first two seasons as Seattle’s starter, Smith ranked 11th in Total QBR. That was one spot behind the Lions’ Jared Goff and seven ahead of the Jaguars’ Trevor Lawrence, who were among a handful of quarterbacks whose annual salary now doubled Smith’s. With the $25 million average of his deal having fallen to 20th at the position, he wanted his own payday.
But neither the front office’s contract policy nor Seattle’s recent head coaching change were working in Smith’s favor. While Carroll had been his biggest supporter in Seattle, others in the organization were unsold on Smith’s viability as their long-term starter, according to sources familiar with the team’s thinking. That doubt led Schneider to acquire quarterback Sam Howell that March with the thought that the former Washington Commanders starter had a shot to eventually take over.
At one practice during the opening week of camp, Smith was rolled up on. He missed three practices and a walk-through as he underwent testing on his hip and knee. The tests confirmed the team’s initial belief that the injuries were nothing serious. Smith’s track record of toughness and strong work ethic coupled with his reaction to not securing an extension led to a belief among Seahawks officials that his four-day absence was more of a protest over his contract than it was injury-related.
When asked if he had been paying attention to other quarterbacks who had recently received lucrative extensions, Smith said he had. “It’s hard not to see it,” he said. “We all see it. I’m really happy for those guys. Whatever they get they deserve. You pay attention to it, but you try to stay focused on what you have to stay focused on, which is my job here with the Seahawks.”
Smith then put together another uneven season. The good included the quarterback leading four game-winning drives and breaking his own franchise records for passing yards and completion rate despite an overmatched offensive line, an inconsistent run game and an unproven college scheme under a first-year coordinator in Ryan Grubb. But Smith also finished 21st in QBR (53.8) and threw 15 interceptions compared to 21 touchdown passes, with a league-high four picks coming in the red zone.
Upon replacing Carroll, Macdonald said during the 2024 offseason that he and his staff challenged Smith to “take the next step as a leader,” wanting him to better mind his demeanor and serve as “the voice of poise” in chaotic situations.
The Seahawks were prepared to ride with Smith as their starter for at least one more season in 2025. When they hired Klint Kubiak in January to replace Grubb, the coordinator publicly cited Smith as one of the job’s most appealing factors. Macdonald had publicly committed to Smith multiple times leading up to the 2025 combine, at one point calling him “a heck of a quarterback.”
But there was still the matter of his contract, with Smith eligible for an extension after his failed attempt to get one in the summer of 2024. By that point, Carroll was back in the NFL — and his new team was in need of a quarterback.
The Seahawks were only half-heartedly traveling down the road of re-signing Smith when, at the NFL scouting combine last February, Carroll’s Raiders gave them an off-ramp.
Seattle’s plan was to offer Smith an extension, but in a free-flowing conversation at the combine, Schneider floated a potential trade that would have sent Smith and receiver DK Metcalf to Las Vegas in exchange for edge rusher Maxx Crosby, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation. The Raiders eventually shot the idea down and extended Crosby after the combine.
Had the Seahawks been sold on Smith as their starter, they had plenty of time to work out an extension, with the quarterback under contract for another season. But what they perceived as an unwillingness on Smith’s part to engage in negotiations led them to revisit trade talks with Las Vegas. They wanted to move quickly on Smith so as to position themselves to find his replacement at the start of free agency.
“When it became obvious that, hey, this is not going to happen, well, you can’t just sit,” Macdonald said. “You don’t want to be caught without a chair at the end of the deal.”
Seattle had already been eying a group of alternatives headlined by Darnold, who was bound for free agency. The Vikings felt he had earned the right to be a starter, but it wasn’t going to be in Minnesota given that they were still committed to J.J. McCarthy after drafting him 10th overall the previous April. They elected not to use the franchise tag on Darnold because Vikings’ team officials thought they could re-sign Daniel Jones to pair with their second-year quarterback.
Aaron Rodgers was another option the Seahawks strongly considered, according to sources familiar with the team’s thinking, but Darnold was their top choice.
He was seven years younger than Smith and potentially cheaper to sign. Schneider had Macdonald and Kubiak watch his film and asked them whether they felt Smith was better.
Darnold’s season had ended with a pair of disastrous performances, first in Week 18 and then in the wild-card round, in which he was sacked nine times. But he had impressed Macdonald and Schneider when he threw three touchdown passes — including the game winner late in the fourth quarter — to beat the Seahawks at Lumen Field in December.
Watching his tape strengthened Seattle’s belief that Darnold — with his movement skills and ability to throw on the run — would be an ideal fit for Kubiak’s scheme. They also thought he would be an ideal leader, with several of their assistants — including Kubiak with the 49ers in 2023 and two others at USC — having coached him in the past. Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell personally vouched for Darnold, according to a source familiar with the conversation.
With their sights now set on Darnold, the Seahawks agreed to send Smith to the Raiders for a third-round pick, reuniting him with Carroll.
During Seattle’s win over the Carolina Panthers in Week 17, the CBS broadcast found a Darnold lookalike in the crowd at Bank of America Stadium.
“Stan Darnold,” as play-by-play man Ian Eagle dubbed him, wore a No. 14 Darnold jersey, with his red hair and beard styled like the quarterback’s.
“That was epic,” Darnold said four days later, as the Seahawks were preparing for the regular-season finale against the 49ers, with the NFC’s No. 1 seed at stake.
“I don’t know who that guy is, but hopefully one day I can meet him and maybe sign a jersey for him.”
That Darnold wasn’t tense ahead of one of the biggest games of his career spoke to something Macdonald has repeatedly said: “Sam is the same guy every day.”
He made the Pro Bowl on the strength of what he did over the first two months. Through 10 weeks, Darnold ranked first in Total QBR (78.2) and yards-per-attempt average (9.9) and third in completion percentage (71.1%) while leading the Seahawks to a 7-2 record.
That stretch hit its peak in Week 9, when he threw four first-half touchdown passes and completed his first 17 attempts in a blowout win over the Commanders in prime time. It was only the fourth instance of an NFL player recording a QBR of at least 97 to that point in the season, and Darnold was responsible for three of them.
Two weeks later, Darnold threw four interceptions in a narrow loss to the Los Angeles Rams that dropped the Seahawks to 7-3. Their defense kept them in the game long enough for Darnold to mount a late comeback, shrugging off his disastrous mistakes to position Seattle for a 61-yard field goal that would have won it.