This past offseason, the Seattle Seahawks decided to retool their offense, while the defense stayed pretty much the same. The moves were logical because by the end of the 2024 season, the defense was a top-10 unit, and the offense was underperforming.
Seattle sent quarterback Geno Smith to the Las Vegas Raiders just days before the start of free agency, and one of the first moves of any team in free agency was the Seahawks wrapping up Sam Darnold to a three-year deal worth a maximum of $100.5 million. Pundits scoffed.
One of those was CBS Sports' Tyler Sullivan. To be clear, this is not a treatise about how poorly Sullivan guessed Darnold would work out with his new team. No one can see the future, and Sullivan made an educated guess based on Darnold's career before 2024.
NFL analyst admits he was wrong about Sam Darnold and the Seattle Seahawks
His logic was sound, but through half the 2025 season, his prognostication, like many other analysts', was way off. Let's hope his offseason opinion of Darnold and Seattle continues to be wrong.
In July, Sullivan wrote, "There's a scenario where Darnold was primarily the beneficiary of an outstanding situation in Minnesota and is primed to regress now that he's surrounded by a lesser cast, resulting in a $100 million miscue by Seattle."
The truth was that Darnold's deal never had to be $100 million, and he only got that much if he played well. If he flamed out in 2025, Seattle could have let him go after one season and paid him just $37.5 million. That part of the contract was always overlooked.
But Sullivan is a stand-up guy. Recently, he wrote another article admitting that any view of Darnold being a problem for the Seahawks was wrong. Again, let's hope his opinion now continues to stay correct.
Sullivan wrote, in part, "In the offseason, the swapping of Geno Smith for Sam Darnold at quarterback was looked at as a semi-improvement or maybe even a lateral move. Boy, was that off... When you pair Darnold continuing to take the NFL by storm with a top-flight defense, the Seahawks are arguably the most balanced team in the NFL."
Seattle hasn't succeeded by playing a terrible schedule either. The team is 6-2 through Week 9, and both losses are by a combined seven points. If not for suffering so many injuries in Week 5, the Seahawks might have toughed out a victory against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers instead of losing 38-35.
The Seahawks also have solid wins over a pair of 5-3 teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Jacksonville Jaguars.
The season doesn't get any easier, however. Seattle still has to play the Los Angeles Rams twice, the Indianapolis Colts, the San Francisco 49ers again (a team Seattle lost to in Week 1), the Minnesota Vikings, and the surprisingly decent Carolina Panthers. For the Seahawks to reach the playoffs, Sam Darnold will need to keep proving NFL pundits wrong.