The Seahawks didn’t pay Sam Darnold to look like a quarterback who’s slipping back into old habits, but that’s where this title defense finds itself six games into the season.
Thursday night in Denver laid it all bare. Darnold was asked to throw it 51 times, and the final line was brutal: 278 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions.
The first came with 1:25 left in regulation, when Seattle had a chance to keep a drive alive in Denver territory and Kris Abrams-Draine stepped in front of it at the Broncos 31. The second was even more damaging, with Ja’Quan McMillian jumping a route at Seattle’s 43 in overtime before Wil Lutz drilled a 53-yard field goal to finish off the Seahawks, 17-14.
The frustrating part for Seattle is that the game was right there. Rashid Shaheed’s 31-yard punt return helped spark the late push, and the Seahawks forced overtime with a tying field goal with :03 left.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba did his part too, hauling in 12 catches for 134 yards. But the whole night still circled back to the same problem: Darnold’s mistakes came at the worst possible times.
The numbers are getting hard to ignore. Darnold’s passer rating is 77.4, his touchdown-to-interception ratio sits at 7-7, and PFF has him with eight turnover-worthy plays, which places him in the bottom third of the league. A Seahawks fan site made the comparison Friday morning, and statistically, this is Jets-era Darnold.
That’s the version Seattle is getting now, not the quarterback who had a real breakthrough in his first season with the team last year. Darnold finished that season with a 99.1 rating and 25 touchdowns, and nothing about this says he doesn’t belong on an NFL roster. But right now, the Seahawks are watching the wrong version of him show up too often.
And the team can’t afford it. Seattle is 3-3, already matching its loss total from all of last season, and it has dropped two straight.
For the defending Super Bowl champions, that’s not a minor skid. That’s a problem.
The uncomfortable question hanging over Seattle is whether 2024 was the exception rather than the beginning of something bigger. Maybe Kevin O’Connell was the one who made Darnold look like a 4,300-yard, 35-touchdown quarterback in Minnesota, with Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison creating easy throws and a system that seemed designed to help the quarterback every step of the way.
Strip away those two seasons - 2024 in Minnesota and 2025 in Seattle - and Darnold’s career rating is 78.1 across six seasons with the Jets and Panthers. That makes what he’s doing now, at 77.4, look a lot more ordinary than transformative.
Seattle doesn’t get much time to sort it out, either. The unbeaten Kansas City Chiefs are next on the schedule next Sunday, and Patrick Mahomes does not need much help to punish giveaways. If the Seahawks want to keep this thing from spinning out, their defense may have to carry a huge load, because the offense is asking it to do too much right now.
The bet Seattle made on Darnold was simple: pay him as the newer, better version of himself and trust the title defense to follow. Six weeks in, the old version is the one showing up.
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