Contract: 3 years, $105.5 million, $55 million guaranteed, $37.5 million in the first year.
21st century sports writing cultivates all hot topics very deeply, indicating that the Earth’s nucleus must be ripped before the next hot topic moves to the next. So every football scribe and orator must take away the Seahawks who turn Geno Smith over for Sam Darnold.
This is in the middle of the room temperature reading the situation. I understand that, but I don’t need to love it.
I think Seattle is younger. I don’t think Smith wanted to take another, lesser offer. I think the club refused to meet those requirements. I think Smith might not have been the perfect fit for Clint Kubiak’s attack. Darnold has experience with new offensive coordinators and is well suited to his vision.
The fact remains: Darnold is a downgrade.
I’m grateful that the Seahawks didn’t overpay much for Darnold. The assumption heading towards free agency was that someone would drop more than $40 million a year for the top QB in the market. That has become a recurring fee. That belief is something that bothers me about getting Darnold involved. Once, the restraint won, and the market did not overpay the quarterback in one good season. Darnold makes much more sense to get a Baker Mayfield type deal. A QB contract requires middle class.
Even if it was predicted by lucrative contracts and Kubiak’s attack, I still don’t like Seattle’s Darnold as the center of the transition. Replacing Smith with Darnold is like replacing Prosciutto with tavern ham.
Darnold goes from the richest of crime with justin Jefferson’s catch machine Kevin O’Connell’s sublime play character, excellent secondary weapons from Jordan Addison and TJ Hockenson, and sublime play character of solid blocking, if solid. Interior blocking was not good in Minnesota, but the head and shoulders were better than what Smith had in Seattle.
Now, Darnold is stepping into the situation with major slots Jackson Smith Nuzigba, aging Marquez Valdes Skanling and Jake Bobo as his top targets. The offensive line was a massively underperforming last season, and the interior is one of the worst in the league.
If you were planning to save some money with QB to strengthen your line, you can’t be upwards for Will Fried. You have to win those negotiations. We looked at Darnold when the pressure was always on our face. He’s scared – and I’m not just talking about seeing ghosts. If he is unraveled in an attack set entirely for him, how will he perform in much less situations?
Perhaps John Schneider has some tricks on his sleeve. Maybe he can have a 24-hour draft, like he was picking producers every turn, like in the early 2010s. He needs to create the necessary or paper-on-sense-on-plan to replace an aging QB with something younger and cheaper.
