The Seattle Seahawks lost to the Denver Broncos in Week 6, 17-14 in overtime, and quarterback Sam Darnold deserves much of the blame. It was what former QB and current Amazon NFL analyst Ryan Fitzpatrick said after the game about Denver's Bo Nix that caught the attention of many, though.
The truth is that Fitzpatrick's harsh rant about Nix could have just as easily been directed at Darnold. Many Seattle fans would have likely agreed.
Fitzpatrick said post-game on the Amazon Prime broadcast, "...part of it for me is Bo Nix is not playing competitively. It’s almost disrespectful to the quarterback position how he’s playing football right now...he’s not playing competitive football right now...He’s not competing right now, and that’s something he’s hung his hat on for the last two years. I don’t know if he’s still injured or what’s going on, but it’s not good enough."
Ryan Fitzpatrick could have been speaking about the Seattle Seahawks' Sam Darnold as much as the Broncos' Bo Nix
Exchange "Bo Nix" for "Sam Darnold," and it is difficult to argue with. Nix, to be fair, was not good either and made some weird decisions near the end of the game. He finished 17 of 27 passing for only 107 yards and a quarterback rating of a dismal 71.1.
Darnold threw nearly twice as many passes (51) for 278 yards, but unlike Nix, Seattle's quarterback threw two interceptions. The latter of the two came in overtime on an atrocious decision to try to fit an intermediate sideline pass in to Rashid Shaheed, who was nowhere near open at any point on his route.
The Seahawks quarterback isn't playing as lost as he was when he began his career with the New York Jets, but he also isn't playing anywhere near as sharply as he has in the last two seasons, the first with the Minnesota Vikings and then last season with Seattle.
Darnold is going to be the team's QB1 for at least the duration of his contract, which ends after the 2027 season, but what happens after that is almost entirely up to him. In the previous two seasons, he has led his teams to a total of 31 victories, one of them being a Super Bowl victory. This season, in the four full games he has played, Seattle is 1-3.
The Broncos have a great defense, and they should get some credit for Darnold's mostly bad performance, but the last interception is fully on Darnold, and the pick was his seventh in four games. That is, of course, not good enough.
So when Ryan Fitzpatrick says that Bo Nix that he "isn't playing competitive football right now," he might as well have included Sam Darnold in that observation, too. The season is going to get away quickly for the Seattle Seahawks if the quarterback play doesn't improve immensely and immediately, and that falls on Darnold to take care of.
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