Talking to people who have played with and coached Darnold over the years — from his teenage years at USC, to the Jets and Panthers, to the 49ers and Vikings and finally to the Seahawks — the stories are remarkably consistent, like the subject of the stories himself.
“Quarterbacks have pressure-cooker positions,” said Max Browne, who was Darnold’s teammate at USC and competed with him for the starting-quarterback job. “Sam is the classic ‘never got too high with the highs and never got too low with the lows.’ Whether it was when I beat him out for the job, or he had just thrown a winning touchdown in the Rose Bowl, he was the same exact dude.”
That actually made Darnold the perfect personality to thrive in New York. What stood out about Darnold with the Jets? That, as young as he was, he was an adult upon arrival. No entourage followed him to help him get settled. He hung out with all of his teammates and was so young that they couldn’t take him to certain clubs, remembers former Jets running back Bilal Powell.
In the first summer after Darnold was drafted, Jets players held a crawfish party. Powell’s young son kept going up to his parents and telling them Sam was playing basketball with him. The Powells thought they were the only ones who brought their kids to the party, so they wondered who this “Sam” was that their son was playing with. Finally, while everyone was getting food, Powell’s son pointed to Darnold and said, “There’s Sam!”
“It was Sam Darnold the whole time,” Powell said. “That’s a highlight of who he was as a person.”
Darnold was the starter from Day 1 of his rookie season. Even with the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard to blame the Jets for that decision. Darnold was a high first-round pick, with a coach and a general manger on the hot seat. The team and its fans had long been searching for its franchise quarterback, and the Jets brass saw early on the raw skills and the mindset that have allowed Darnold to finally fulfill his promise. His very first regular-season pass was an interception that was returned for a touchdown. Powell went to him and told him he was fine.
“You could never see his emotion — he never wore it on his sleeve,” Powell said.
That was true off the field, too. One time, Darnold appeared in the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column. A public relations staff member had to tell him. Darnold’s reaction: “OK.”
“He never batted an eye,” said Bucs head coach Todd Bowles, who was the Jets’ coach in Darnold’s rookie season. “He was outstanding. Unbelievable. Yes, sir. No, sir. He tried to do everything the right way. He never got frustrated. He always wanted to know what he could work out to get better. He kept his West Coast attitude.”
After his rookie season, Browne and Darnold met up for a drink. Darnold told Browne about some of the events from that first year.
“He said some comment, ‘At the end of the day, I’m a starting quarterback in the NFL. Things are pretty good.’ ” Browne remembers.
