Wham, bam thank you Sam

Quarterback Sam Darnold had just finished playing what very well might be the best game in what was undoubtedly the biggest moment of his career when one of FOX’s sideline reporters gave him a chance to dunk on all the haters.

“How do you describe the journey it took to get here, Sam?” asked Tom Rinaldi.

It was an open-ended opportunity for Darnold to discuss any and all of the adversity he had faced over the course of his eight years in the NFL. He could have poked back at the people who’d declared him a bust either after the Jets traded him or referenced re-writing his own story after people concluded he choked at the end of last season with the Vikings. 

He could have used it as an opportunity to talk about how he played in this game against the Rams compared to the two regular-season meetings when the Rams picked him off a total of six times.

I will admit there is a part of me that wishes Darnold had channeled Richard Sherman in this moment: “Well, Tom, I’m one of the best quarterbacks in the game, and if you spend this whole season waiting for me to implode, that’s the result you’re going to get.”

That’s not what Darnold said, of course. He didn’t clap back. He didn’t address the non-believers. 

“I haven’t thought about it that much, Tom, to be honest with you,” Darnold said. “I take it one day at a time. That’s it. One day at a time every single day, and like I said, to be able to do it with these guys out here, this locker room. It’s a special group and I wouldn’t want to do it with anybody else.”

This struck me as surprising and telling.

In the 20 years that I covered professional athletes, I saw a distinct tendency to hold on to slights both real and perceived. To use doubts that other people have as motivational fuel. To hold a chip on their respective shoulders as the saying goes.

I do not say that as a bad thing though I do believe the approach has some drawbacks. What has struck me most about Darnold during this season is that he doesn’t seem to do that. In fact, I think he consciously avoids that entire train of thought. I’ll get more into that toward in a bit, but first let’s take a look at my favorite moment from the telecast of Sunday’s game.

Wasn’t that great?

That was after the fourth-and-4 in the fourth quarter when Devon Witherspoon defended a pass intended for Terrance Ferguson and the Seahawks took over on downs.

⭐️ One shining moment

I am not surprised that the Seahawks won. I am surprised, however, at how they won.

Kenneth Walker got the offense going and the defense had a critical stop in the fourth quarter, but it was Darnold who provided the horsepower in this game. Darnold who avoided the turnovers.

Darnold hit Rasheed Shahid for a 51-yard gain on Seattle’s first possession and Darnold who completed that 42-yard pass to Jaxon Smith-Njigba in the final minute of the first half. That throw put the Seahawks in position to score a touchdown and take a 17-13 lead into halftime.

This was not the buttoned-up offense that we saw from the Seahawks so often in the final month of the season. The Seahawks were not trying to avoid putting too much on Darnold.

He let it rip, and Seattle doesn’t win this game if Darnold doesn’t have the kind of performance he had.

Matthew Stafford is probably going to be named the league’s MVP, and he absolutely played like it against Seattle. He completed 65 percent of his passes and finished with 374 yards. He threw for three touchdowns and wasn’t picked off.

Darnold was his every bit his equal. He completed 69 percent of his passes and finished with 346 yards. He also threw for three touchdowns and wasn‘t picked off.

He played as clean and lethal a game as he has all year, and I am absolutely thrilled for him.

🛋️ The dime-store psychologist’s couch

When you really get down to it, there are exactly three storylines that are used in sports writing:

1. The rise 🕶️

2. The fall 💥

3. The redemption 🌅

That’s it. Those are the arcs, and after eight years in the NFL, Darnold has experienced about every variation of these particular plotlines.

Drafted No. 3 overall out of USC, he was billed first as the Jets’ savior then a bust.

He redeemed himself in Minnesota only to be revealed as a player people said shrunk in the biggest moments. 

And even as he guided an NFL team to 14 victories for a second consecutive season this year in Seattle … even after teammates like Ernest Jones offered profane instructions for anyone who doubted Seattle’s quarterback … we’ve all wondered if the other shoe was going to drop.

At least I know I did.

If I was Darnold, this would linger in the back of my mind. But that’s probably a reflection of my tendency to remember slights, both real and perceived.

I’m not alone in this regard. In fact, I’ve now got a whole newsletter that is dedicated to this particular subject, and some of my experience with grudges and resentment relates to the examples I’ve seen in professional sports.

Sherman is absolutely someone who holds on to what people have said about him. 

Geno Smith is someone who used this approach, too. He came up with the catch phrase, saying that he may have been written off, but he didn’t write back.

I’m not saying that this is a bad way to approach performance. Michael Jordan has spent a lifetime not only harboring grudges, but inventing reasons for their very existence.

It doesn’t necessarily work for everybody, though.

Jermaine Kearse was someone who became very conscious about keeping a positive outlook. Jayson Jenks wrote a wonderful story about this for The Seattle Times back when Kearse was still with the Seahawks. He didn’t hold on to slights and insults that he’d received over the course of his football career whether it be for fans or in one case a specific assistant at the University of Washington.¹  

Darnold seems to be cut from the same cloth as Kearse, and I think that’s worth noting for two reasons:

1. There are different ways to fuel top-end performance. People have a tendency to believe that you need to work yourself into a froth of anger and resentment to perform at your best. This can actually be an impediment for some people.

2. The world that we live in is far too complex to be distilled down into the three storylines we use when talking about sports.

I think it’s a mistake to characterize this as Darnold’s redemption.

To do so would require you to believe that his career had taken some horrible turn after he left college. 

He plays one of the most demanding positions in one of the most exclusive professions in the world. The Seahawks are the fifth different business sufficiently impressed by his ability to pay him (handsomely) to do so.

It took a little longer than people hoped/expected for him to reach this level of success, but that might tell us more about the fairness of expectations than Darnold’s actual ability. Yes, there have been bumps along the way, but that’s part of life, and one of the reasons that Darnold has got this far is that he doesn’t waste his time worrying about how others feel about what he’s doing.

Good for him. That was a hell of game on Sunday.

1  It’s quite possible that I’m more bothered about what the assistant coach said to Kearse than he is.