Past Failures of ‘Battle-Tested’ Veterans Drives Seahawks to Historic Super Bowl Run
RENTON, Wash. - Winning in the NFL isn’t easy. And though the Seattle Seahawks have found the win column more than any other team during the 2025 season with the third-youngest roster in the league on the way to a Super Bowl LX berth, there’s no shortage of seasoned vets in the locker room who have experienced the other side of the coin.
Just ask Sam Darnold, a former top-three draft choice who appeared to be on the fast track towards bust trajectory after three challenging seasons with the Jets and two subpar seasons with the Panthers.
Long before orchestrating a renaissance with the Vikings and signing a three-year contract with the Seahawks last March, Darnold received the most attention for his infamous “seeing ghosts” comment that unfortunately was caught by a hot mic on the sideline during a 33-0 loss to the Patriots in his second NFL season. Posting a 13-25 record as a starter with the Jets, including that ugly loss, he didn’t get to sniff the playoffs until 2023 when he backed up Brock Purdy with the 49ers, a sign of how far his career had fallen at that point.
Those struggles created a narrative that Darnold couldn’t be relied upon as a starter, let alone a franchise quarterback, and that narrative followed him everywhere like a shadow. Even after leading Minnesota to 14 wins in 2024, an early playoff exit kept that storyline alive for skeptics, and such questions persisted leading up to Seattle’s NFC Championship Game date last Sunday with the Los Angeles Rams, the same opponent that ended his season one year earlier to a punishing tune of a nine sacks.
But instead of folding as the narrative suggested he would, Darnold didn’t flinch this time. Unleashing fastballs from the pocket with elite accuracy and anticipation regardless of whether or not he was pressured or hit, he made his long-time nemesis pay with a historic performance 12s won’t soon forget, throwing for 346 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions as the Seahawks secured the George Halas Trophy with a 31-27 win over the Rams.
“I think for me, there was a lot that I didn't know back then, so I'm just going to continue to learn and grow in this great game. There is a lot of stuff that I can get better from today even,” a modest as ever Darnold said post-game, taking the high road when reminded about the ghost comments in his past. “I feel like I missed some throws out there that I shouldn't miss. There were some things offensively that I feel like we can do better. So we're always looking to get better. I'm always looking to get better. That's the great part about this game is you win an NFC Championship and you win games throughout the season, but there is always ways that you can look to get better.”
Critics outside of the locker room may have been surprised by the quarterback’s clutch turn under the brightest lights, but not Darnold’s coaches or teammates, who have revered him as a player, a leader, and a man since his arrival for OTAs last April. And certainly, his ho-hum response about where he has grown since scuffling in his first five seasons demonstrates how that experience among others hardened him through adversity, creating a pathway for eventual redemption that several other veterans in Seattle have traveled themselves.
No player may understand the plight Darnold has overcome better than Seahawks safety Julian Love, who, like the quarterback, began his career playing for one of the New York franchises and enduring a whole lot of losing. Toiling away on a Giants squad that spent the majority of his four seasons with the organization in the hunt for a top five draft pick instead of the postseason, he understood the incredible pressure of playing in one of the NFL’s biggest markets for a disappointing, underachieving team.
After finally playing in two playoff games in his fourth and final season in the Meadowlands, Love bolted in free agency to join the Seahawks, who had been far more frequent participants in the playoffs for the past decade. That winning tradition and culture played a decisive role in his decision to take his talents to the Pacific Northwest, though immediate postseason success continued to evade him with the team narrowly missing out on wild card spots each of the past two seasons.
Still, Love emerged as a key cog for a much-improved Seattle defense, tallying 232 combined tackles and seven interceptions in his first two seasons with the franchise, including making his first Pro Bowl in 2023. That stellar play turned an initial two-year contract into a far more lucrative extension in July 2024, and even after missing nine of 17 regular season games due to injury this year, he has rounded back into form in the playoffs with six tackles and a fumble recovery to help lock up a Super Bowl berth.
He and Darnold didn’t come into the league with the same expectations - Love was a fourth round pick out of Notre Dame, after all - but the veteran safety saw firsthand how the media storm in New York could easily chew up and spit players out in no time, even for those who played for the other team in town. Given how the signal caller’s tenure with the Jets crashed and burned for many reasons outside of his control, including inferior coaching and personnel around him, he loved seeing the gunslinger silence his doubters by carrying the Seahawks to a conference title with his arm and resilience.
“‘You probably just got lucky today.’ That's what they like to say, right?,” Love joked. “I have a perspective on Sam because I started my career in New York. He got a bad rap early, and I think that's not fitting for who he is as a person or as a player. He shows it when he works hard. He's humble about it. He takes no shortcuts in the process. Everyone in the building loves him. He's just a good guy. He's just a guy, a guy you can enjoy playing golf with, and a guy that you can take pride in leading you on the field. All of that criticism is not warranted. He showed up when it mattered, and he won us a game today.”
Similar to Darnold and Love, who he happened to be teammates with earlier in his career before reuniting with both in Seattle, defensive tackle Leonard Williams dealt with the unpleasantries of losing in New York, doing so in extended stints with both the Jets and Giants. Stuck in non-contender purgatory with a bunch of unsuccessful head coaches and often overlooked as one of the premier players at his position as an unfavorable consequence, he didn’t play in his first NFL playoff game until 2022, missing the postseason in all of his first seven years in the league.
Williams thought his run of early vacations after the final week of the regular season would come to a close once the Seahawks traded for him in October 2023, but like Love, that wasn’t meant to be. The team missed the postseason despite his impressive production, including 11 sacks and 16 quarterback hits in a phenomenal 2024 campaign.
“Big Cat” didn’t let that development deter him, however, staying patient with an eye on the big picture. Coming off a 10-win season in coach Mike Macdonald’s first year at the helm, he knew Seattle was incredibly close to not just becoming a playoff team, but being a viable threat to win a Super Bowl. With young stars in Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Devon Witherspoon headlining an exciting foundation, all that was missing was a potential upgrade at quarterback, help on the offensive line, and a few more pieces on defense.
Sure enough, general manager John Schneider checked off all of those boxes, replacing Geno Smith with Darnold, drafting guard Grey Zabel in the first round to immediately bolster a much-improved front line, and signing ex-Cowboys Pro Bowl defensive end Demarcus Lawrence - another player who has dealt with his share of disappointments either missing the playoffs or getting eliminated earlier than expected - along with drafting hyper-athletic safety Nick Emmanwori to turn an already great defense into a historically elite one.
From Love’s perspective, that melting pot of rising young talent and proven “battle tested” veterans has been the perfect mix to build chemistry and comradery for a tight-knit group that has been meshing seamlessly since offseason workouts started in April. There’s never been a question about buy in under Macdonald’s leadership, and unlike most NFL locker rooms, vets are not only passing on their knowledge to the young bucks, but also willingly listening to their younger peers with open ears.
“It just created a very cool environment where everyone's feeding off each other,” Love remarked. “Everyone has a say in the room, and that's not just talk, it's real. If somebody sees something, they say something. It's all meant with love.”
The relationships that have been cultivated on and off the field through such collaborative efforts have been instrumental in the rapid turnaround in Macdonald’s brief tenure, leading to 14 regular season wins and culminating with a shot to win a second Super Bowl in the franchise’s 50th anniversary season.
For players such as Williams and Love who had never even been to a championship game, it’s been a long time coming. The same can be said for Darnold, who rose from the ashes of losing a starting job with multiple teams to reemerge as the star quarterback everyone once thought he would be coming out of USC. Likewise, at 33 years young, Lawrence has turned the page after countless Divisional Round and Wild Card round losses in Dallas to finally play in the big game, shushing his own doubters.
After punching a ticket to Santa Clara, all four could be seen enjoying victory cigars and relishing the moment with teammates on Sunday night, soaking in the fruits of their labor from seeds that took far longer to sprout than anticipated. Collectively, after being exposed to plenty of losing to learn from along the way, that leaves just one wall left for Williams and company to break down as they aim to enhance their legacies and cement their place in the record books leading the Seahawks to a Lombardi Trophy.
