The big question about new Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold is very simple: Will he
continue to play like he did in Minnesota last season?

Matt Hasselbeck and others are confident he will.

Darnold struggled early in his career because he had really bad coaching with the Jets and Panthers. To his credit, he got out of that cycle and intentionally took a step back so he could learn how to play quarterback in the NFL.

Now he just needs to find that “clutch gene” to become Seattle’s franchise quarterback, Hasselbeck said.

Hasselbeck told 710 AM that Darnold “played way before he was ready to play. Didn’t do very well. Had to kind of humble himself, take a step back to take two steps forward.”

The Jets drafted him third overall in 2018 and — like most teams drafting that high — did not have a good infrastructure for him. They threw him to the wolves as a rookie.

“I thought the Jets – surprise, surprise – did him a huge disservice. Huge,” Hasselbeck said. “That was a terrible place to go. He has handled poorly. He fell on his face.”

In a separate 710 AM appearance, Mark Schlereth explained that the Jets were running an offense similar to the one Peyton Manning had run in Indianapolis. It was way over the rookie Darnold’s head.

Kyle Shanahan, who later coached Darnold, told Schlereth, “There’s one guy on the planet that can run the Peyton Manning offense, and that’s Peyton Manning.”

After the Jets failed to support Darnold for three years, they gave up and traded him to Carolina. As Schlereth explained it, “We’re in another collegiate system. Matt Rhule ends up getting fired, and Steve Wilks takes over and Ben McAdoo is the coordinator at that time. So it’s Year 4, about nine games in, before Sam Darnold was ever put in a progression-style offense.”

After two unstable and unsuccessful years in Carolina, Darnold finally had his choice of where to play in 2023, and he took control of his career by signing to back up Brock Purdy in San Francisco.

“Being in a really good organization was a priority for me,” Darnold said at the time. “Being with really good coaches and really good personnel as well. Those were kind of the top things for me.”

Shanahan also said then: “Sam has as good of a skill set as there is. That’s why he was the third pick in the draft. … I don’t think he’s always been in the best situations, which is tough for quarterbacks.”

In San Francisco during that 2023 season, Darnold worked with Klint Kubiak. He then went to Minnesota, which ran a similar offense based on Sean McVay’s version with the Rams. Darnold ended up getting the starting job when first-round pick J.J. McCarthy was injured. Under Kevin O’Connell, Darnold finally put together the kind of season his draft pedigree said he was capable of.

Hasselbeck said, “He was able to reinvent himself a little bit in San Fran. Had an opportunity with Kevin O’Connell, who is a McVay disciple, and seized the next opportunity he got.”

Darnold clearly is making choices now that he knows will put him in position to succeed, which is why he is back with Kubiak, in an offense he knows. There is every reason to believe he will repeat and even build on what he did with the Vikings.  

Schlereth pointed out, “That’s what Sam Darnold played in when he was a backup in San Francisco and then went to Minnesota and played in that. So this would be the third year with the root of that system being the same.”

Kubiak “does an excellent job of protecting the quarterback, not having a lot of sacks,” Hasselbeck said. “All the kind of things that plagued … Sam Darnold early in his career, Klint Kubiak is a perfect remedy for …”

So what does Darnold, who turns 28 in June, need to improve on to make the Seahawks invest in him long term?

“I think the thing that he’s going to have to prove is kind of that clutch gene, making those plays that need to be made in playoff games or big games,” Hasselbeck said. “That’s gonna be the next step for him to be in that rare air of consistency as a franchise quarterback.”