Danielle Parhizkaran/NorthJersey.com-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Despite the fact that they have not made the playoffs in 15 seasons and counting — the longest postseason drought across America’s top five sports leagues — the New York Jets somehow find themselves as a topic of conversation during Super Bowl week given that they’re the ones who drafted Seattle Seahawks starting QB Sam Darnold.
While the Jets invested the 3rd overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft into Sam Darnold, they gave him just three seasons later — two of which were under historically awful head coach Adam Gase — and traded him to the Carolina Panthers.
After brief stints with Carolina and the San Francisco 49ers, Darnold got a starting gig with the Minnesota Vikings in 2024, and the rest, as they say, is history: he’s since become one of two QBs to win at least 14 games in back to back seasons. The other? Tom Brady.
Although most Jets fans, myself included, were *already* salty about the Darnold trade prior to his Super Bowl birth this year, former members of the team are still coming out of the woodwork to rub salt in the wound nonetheless.
“He’s the one I never second-guessed,” former Jets GM Mike Maccagnan said of drafting Darnold. “I always felt he was the one I got right.”
A litany of former New York Jets have gone on record to say that they knew quarterback Sam Darnold would be good
“He showed flashes; that’s why [the trade] didn’t make sense. Our head coach that we hired [Adam Gase] didn’t really help us out now. He did not help us out,” former Jets safety Jamal Adams told ESPN. “Sometimes you look back like ‘Golly!’ We had Sam Darnold in our hands, and now he’s going to the Super Bowl. Man, if only New York had some patience with him. Like, he was the guy, man. He was gonna be The Guy. He just needed time.”
“Sometimes in the league, in certain situations, it’s not always the player,” wide receiver Robbie Chosen added. “It takes the foundation around you that helps you become great. I remember saying it on [a podcast], when they were trying to debate with me about him as a player. I’m like, ‘He’s good, he just hasn’t been developed correctly.'”
“He always had that greatness within him,” Chosen added. “Seeing him have the opportunity to win it all on the biggest stage, I’m very excited and happy for him.”
“Everything he has endured, everything he went through has set him up to be the player that he is, the person that he is and the competitor that he is. It’s all forged him and hardened him to be the player that he is,” tackle Kelvin Beachum added.
In 38 career games for the Jets across three seasons, Darnold had a passer rating of 78.6 with 8,097 yards, 45 touchdowns and 39 interceptions.
Now that Darnold is on the verge of achieving the ultimate NFL success with the Seahawks, it’s clear that whatever the problem was in New York, it had more to do with the Jets and Darnold. The same was true about Mark Sanchez and Geno Smith, too, but that’s a different story for another day.