The Seahawks better just hope it’s October — and thus ghost season — and that’s why Sam Darnold is playing like he’s with the Jets again.
One season after leading Seattle to a Super Bowl title, Darnold is back to playing rather uninspiring football and his two-interception, zero-touchdown performance doomed the reigning champs in their 17-14 overtime road loss to the Broncos on “Thursday Night Football.”
Darnold threw his second interception of the night on the first overtime possession to set up Denver’s game-winning field goal, and Seattle is now 1-3 since he returned from a Week 1 glute injury.
“I think it’s BS for me to keep turning the ball over,” Darnold said after falling to 3-3. “It’s not fair to our defense, not fair to our special teams group, not fair really to our entire team. I got to be better that way.”
The Seahawks entered this year seemingly in good position to repeat as Super Bowl champions, especially after Darnold’s first season with the team in 2026 went so smooth.
This year has marked a notable regression for the former Jets’ first-round pick, who now has seven interceptions to seven passing touchdowns.
All the interceptions have come in the last four games since he missed one contest due to an injury suffered on the first drive of the season-opening win over the Patriots.
Thursday night marked his third multi-interception performance and prevented the Seahawks from winning a game in which the defense allowed just 168 total yards.
Trailing 14-11 with less than two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, Darnold threw his first interception but received a second chance when the defense posted a three-and-out.
He led the Seahawks to a game-tying field goal, but the good feelings didn’t last when he threw an interception in overtime on a play he described as “greedy.”
That turnover gave the Broncos the ball at the Seahawks’ 43-yard line and they moved eight yards before winning on a 53-yard field goal.
Darnold finished 27 of 51 for 278 yards.
“No way to sugercoat it. That one sucked,” Darnold said. “Can’t turn the ball over, that’s obviously at the forefront of my mind, but there’s just a lot that we can do better.
“We just got to be better all around and it starts with me. We just gotta look at who we are as an offense and look at kind of things we do well, things we don’t do well and go from there.”
Darnold addressed his team after the game, per coach Mike Macdonald, taking accountability for his lack of ball security.
After throwing 60 touchdowns to 25 interceptions over the 2024 (Vikings) and 2025 seasons combined, Darnold suddenly seems like the weak link in the Seahawks’ operation.
He’s turned the ball over at least once in each of his four non-injury-shortened starts.
“When you have a defense and special teams group playing the way that they are for us, for me, I just gotta protect the football,” he said. “Dropping back and taking what they give me, I feel I did a pretty good job of that in the first half and then late in the second half, those two plays, just can’t have it.”
The turnovers especially loom large since Seattle now sits 2 1/2 games behind the undefeated and division-leading 49ers, who own the tiebreaker after winning in Seattle in Week 5, and the NFC West contains another struggling but potentially elite team in the Rams.
It’s not a given that the Seahawks can make the playoffs if Darnold continues to play like this, with Macdonald acknowledging the ball being in “jeopardy” as his primary concern.
Said Macdonald: “We have to take care of the ball. Sam knows that. He told the team that.”
