Sam Darnold to the rescue!
When recapping part of her Super Bowl 2026 experience Tuesday during a radio appearance on Chicago’s 104.3 The Score, ESPN’s Kalyn Kahler detailed how she fell into the Seahawks quarterback’s locker postgame at Levi’s Stadium and accidentally spilled his beer.
“I start approaching the scrum [in the locker room]. I can’t hear anything, so I go around to one side of him where it’s closest to his locker, and there was a folding chair in front of the locker, and I was like, ‘Great, if I kneel on this folding chair, I’ll be able to get my phone in there and get some good video,’ and I also wanted to get a couple questions in so I needed to be heard to be close,” Kahler, a senior NFL writer, recalled.
“So I kneel on the folding chair and the folding chair collapsed underneath me… it collapsed right away and I went hands-first into his locker, because it’s like a cubby, so I went straight into his locker and he had a beer sitting there, and I knocked it over.”
Darnold, fresh off the Seahawks’ 29-13 triumph over the Patriots, paused the group interview at his locker to check in on Kahler, as captured in footage from the scene.
“You OK?” the quarterback, 28, asked in a video shared by Kahler, who replied, “I’m good.”
“Happy to report Darnold is the nice guy we think he is,” she captioned a clip shared Tuesday on X, “and PSA to never ever trust a folding chair.”
The author of one of the league’s best comeback stories, Darnold became a first-time Super Bowl champion Sunday, as Seattle’s relentless defense gave New England’s Drake Maye fits for the better part of 60 minutes.
Darnold went 19-for-38 with 202 yards and a touchdown, and did not turn the ball over once.
“My job was to take care of the football,” the quarterback said. “If I had to take sacks or throw the ball away I would do it. I just played that kind of game.”
Darnold joined the Seahawks in the offseason on a three-year, $100.5 million deal after revitalizing his career in 2024 with a surprise 14-3 run with the Vikings.
He had long been regarded as a castoff following failed stints with the Jets, who drafted him third overall in 2018, and the Panthers.
It was the confidence conveyed from his Seahawks family that propelled Darnold to the NFL mountaintop.
“My teammates and my coaches. They believed in me,” he said.
