SEATTLE — With the Vikings in 2024, Sam Darnold won 14 of his first 16 starts, throwing 35 touchdown passes to 12 interceptions on his way to a Pro Bowl appearance and some MVP buzz. And then it all fell apart with two disastrous performances in Minnesota’s regular-season finale and wild-card playoff loss, showing how quickly fortunes can change in the NFL.
So did what happened Sunday.
For the first 59 minutes of the Seattle Seahawks’ 38-35 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Lumen Field, Darnold was brilliant. He threw accurately and on time, made plays from the pocket and on the run, and carried the team on an uncharacteristically off day for its short-handed defense.
And then his four-touchdown masterpiece — the best performance of what’s been an excellent start to his Seattle career — came undone thanks to a tough-luck interception, with his attempt at a throwaway bouncing off one Tampa Bay defender and into the hands of another to set up the Bucs’ game-winning field goal.
“It’s crushing,” wide receiver Cooper Kupp said. “A crushing way for it to end there.”
Moral victories aren’t worth much in the NFL — except ones like these. Because if Darnold continues on his current trajectory, this game may not be remembered years from now for the fact that the Seahawks lost or for all the reasons why, but instead for being the moment in which it became clear that they had found a long-term answer at the sport’s most important position.
“We have a very special quarterback here,” said tight end AJ Barner, who caught two of Darnold’s four touchdown passes, “and I think people are starting to find that out.”
Darnold ranked ninth in QBR over the first four weeks, leading the Seahawks to three straight wins after a losing debut. Among the most impressive elements of his play have been his ability to avoid sacks and create big plays while scrambling, something he showed again Sunday.
With the game tied at 21-21 late in the fourth quarter and Seattle facing a fourth-and-2 from Tampa Bay’s 21, coach Mike Macdonald bypassed a go-ahead field-goal try and put the ball in his quarterback’s hands. Darnold stepped up in the pocket, escaped two Bucs pass-rushers and found rookie receiver Tory Horton for his fourth touchdown pass of the day.
That capped an eight-play, 99-yard drive.
“He has some magic up his sleeve,” Horton said. “He’s always on top of his game. Just the way he moves in the pocket is very underrated. That’s stuff that we repped in practice. I threw my hand up and he made eye contact and we knew we had a play. He’s doing all he can out there. He’s playing at the top of his game.”
Darnold’s first throw of that touchdown drive was tipped by a Tampa Bay defender right to its intended target in Kupp, who gained 9 yards to get the Seahawks out of the shadow of their own end zone. So perhaps the Bucs were owed the bounce they got on the decisive interception.
With 58 seconds left and the score tied at 35 apiece, Darnold took a shotgun snap from his own 32-yard line and faced immediate pressure from safety Antoine Winfield Jr., one of two Bucs defenders blitzing on the play. He said postgame that what looked like a hurried pass over the middle to a well-covered Kupp was really a throwaway, but it ricocheted off the helmet of defensive lineman Logan Hall and into the hands of linebacker Lavonte David.
The Seahawks had handled Tampa Bay’s blitzes masterfully to that point, allowing no sacks and only two official QB hits. Darnold said that added to the disappointment of the final play, noting that he had an opportunity to change the protection pre-snap but did not.
“I feel like that was bad quarterback play on that last snap,” he said.
It was the lone blemish on an otherwise flawless day. Darnold completed 28 of 34 passes for 341 yards. Those were season-highs, as were his four touchdown passes, while his 82.4% completion rate matched a career-high.
According to ESPN Research, Darnold was 5 of 5 for 156 yards and a touchdown on passes that traveled at least 15 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, the most completions of his career without an interception on such throws.
“Sam played a tremendous football game,” Macdonald said. “I thought we were going to have a chance to win the game there at the end. What was it, a 99-yard drive, fourth down, extending plays. I thought Sam played tremendous.”
The Seahawks were one of the NFL’s least-penalized teams over the first four weeks before being flagged nine times, seven of which were accepted for 56 yards. They squandered two scoring chances in the first half, with Jason Myers missing a 44-yard field goal and rookie quarterback Jalen Milroe fumbling on a bad option pitch. And then there was Darnold’s interception.
More than any reason, though, the Seahawks lost Sunday because their defense got beat worse than it had in any game since Macdonald took over in 2024. Baker Mayfield found one open receiver after another on his way to 379 passing yards, and Seattle’s pass-rush managed to hit him only twice.
It didn’t help that the Seahawks were already playing without three starters on that side of the ball (DeMarcus Lawrence, Julian Love and Devon Witherspoon) and lost two more (Derick Hall and Riq Woolen), but Macdonald wouldn’t use injuries as an excuse, noting that Tampa Bay was short-handed as well.
Macdonald said Hall was getting imaging done postgame to determine the severity of his oblique injury, so there was no early indication on whether he’ll be available to play next Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Woolen suffered a concussion.
“Injuries happen in the NFL,” Macdonald said. “I have to design better plays and put our guys in better positions consistently for us to play better on defense. It’s that simple.”
Before the Seahawks fell to 3-2 Sunday, Geno Smith threw two more interceptions in the Las Vegas Raiders’ blowout loss, bringing his total to nine picks in five games. The NFL regularly dolls out reminders of the danger of drawing premature conclusions, but the early returns indicate the Seahawks not only found an upgrade over Smith — but their quarterback of the future as well.
“That was an incredibly impressive performance by [Darnold],” Kupp said.
