There’s a certain comfort in hearing a fellow Trojan say the quiet part out loud.
Brian Scalabrine, the USC alum who has spent his second act in the media world with NBC Sports Boston, looked at Sam Darnold’s rise in Seattle and pointed past the easy headline. The quarterback didn’t wake up one Sunday and become “fixed.” The environment changed, and the details finally started pulling in the same direction.
Brian Scalabrine Speaks About Sam Darnold’s Development
“You can put that into a lot of sports situations, finding the right coach, good offensive line, good receivers, offensive coordinator, all that stuff comes into play in that sport,” Scalabrine shared with PFSN on Tuesday night before the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks at the American Airlines Center.
It’s a simple idea, but it’s one that gets lost whenever a former top pick becomes a punchline. Football loves to assign a single cause. Bust. Savior. Bad decision-maker. Great leader. But Darnold’s path has never been a straight line, and that’s the point.
“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.”
Resurgence Is Usually a Team Story
Quarterback is the most individual position in American sports, and it’s still a group project.
Darnold entered the league with the kind of hype that turns patience into a luxury. When things went sideways early in New York, every mistake became a referendum. Coaching changes, pressure packages, and a fan base desperate for a franchise answer can speed up the clock before a young quarterback ever learns how to slow it down.
“As a young player, too, early in my career, I was really hard on myself after a bad rep or a bad practice,” Darnold said Wednesday. “I would let it affect my attitude a little bit.”
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Years later, Darnold would accept: “It’s not always going to be perfect. That’s why everybody loves this game and people call it some of the best reality TV there is.”
His stops that followed did not build the kind of continuity that gives a passer room to breathe. They gave him snaps, not stability. They gave him a new language every year, not an identity.
That’s where the idea of “fit” gets real. Fit isn’t just scheme. It’s the full ecosystem, Scalabrine rattled off in one breath: coaching, protection, weapons, coordinator, and the week-to-week plan that lets a quarterback play fast without playing recklessly.
What Seattle Actually Changed for Darnold
Seattle’s success story is not that the Seahawks discovered a secret play. It’s that they built a week that makes sense.
Mike Macdonald’s imprint has been obvious from the start. The defense has carried the brand, but the offense has been the more interesting reveal. Seattle has played with purpose: cleaner early-down decisions, fewer desperation third downs, and an approach that asks Darnold to stack completions before he hunts explosives.
That structure matters for a quarterback whose career has been defined by streaks. When the read is defined and the pocket is trustworthy, the game feels smaller. When the plan is coherent, confidence isn’t a speech. It’s the natural byproduct of repetition.
And when the supporting cast does its job, the quarterback gets to do his.
Seattle has also done something the best organizations do quietly. It has protected the player from the noise. Darnold is not asked to be a weekly redemption story in the building. He’s asked to execute. That’s a subtle difference that can change how a quarterback carries the next series after a bad one.
Sam Donald even received praise from former Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson last month on X, who called his last two seasons inspirational.
“Sam Darnold’s comeback story over the past 2 years has been one of the most inspirational things to watch! Cool seeing him overcome!!! Congrats bro. Hope you win it!” Wilson wrote on X.
Sam Darnold: The Real Meaning of a Comeback
Comebacks are often framed as revenge. Darnold has looked more like acceptance.
At this stage, he isn’t trying to prove every critic wrong on every throw. He’s trying to win the down. That shift can sound soft, but it’s actually ruthless. It demands discipline. It demands a willingness to take the boring completion, to throw the ball away, to live for the next possession.
That is how careers last in the NFL.
That is also how teams reach January with a quarterback who still trusts what he sees.
The Seahawks’ run to Super Bowl 60 has put Darnold in a place that once felt impossible. Not because the league suddenly became kinder, but because the pieces around him finally fit like a professional offense is supposed to fit.
Scalabrine’s quote lands because it cuts through the mythology. Talent matters. So does development. So does timing. But in the NFL, the ecosystem is the amplifier.
Seattle turned up the volume, and the league noticed.
As for the game itself, Scalabrine, who is an alumnus of Highline Community College in Des Moines, Washington, said, “I’m a Boston guy too now, but I’ll say the Seahawks look, their defense is insane.”
“It looks like the Seahawks are going to be really tough to beat, but the Patriots have something going on. So I’m not going to pick a winner, but I’m gonna say this, hopefully it’s a lot better game than what people think it’s gonna be.”