Seahawks QB Sam Darnold 'Really Sharp' In Preseason Debut

Sam Darnold made his preseason debut in Friday’s win over the Chiefs, completing all four pass attempts while leading a touchdown drive.

Aug 16, 2025 at 12:37 AM

John Boyle

Seahawks.com Senior Reporter

After being held out of last week's preseason game, new Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold was on the field Friday night for his first game action with his new team.

And while it was only a brief cameo for Darnold and several other offensive starters, it was an encouraging debut.

Playing off a dominant running game, Darnold completed all four of his pass attempts, hitting four different receivers, for 34 yards as part of a 10-play, 81-yard touchdown drive that sparked a 33-16 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.

"Really sharp," Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald said. "Pretty sure he wanted to keep going, but he showed what he can do, so really great drive… Offensively it's about how you would script it."

While Friday night's brief appearance, which saw Darnold complete passes to Jaxon Smith-Njigba, AJ Barner, Elijah Arroyo and Robbie Ouzts, might not jump off the stat sheet, it was just another example of how he has taken command of Seattle's offense since joining the team as a free agent this spring.

"The cool part about Sammy was, since he got here, he's just kind of been the dude," said receiver Jake Bobo, who caught a pair of touchdown passes from Drew Lock after Darnold exited the game. "Obviously different offenses call different things differently, so he's had to learn that aspect of it, but ever since he got here in April, you could tell he had a grasp on what we were trying to do."

Bobo added that Darnold's familiarity with this style of offense—he spent 2023 in San Francisco where current Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak was then the 49ers' passing game coordinator—has been beneficial to everyone else in the offense.

"He's a guy that I can go to, that Coop (Kupp) can go to, that all the receivers can go to if we have a question about what we're trying to do with different route stems, timing stuff," Bobo said. "So to have a guy like Sam, as physically gifted as he is, mentally where he's at right now, has been huge for our growth as an offense."

For Darnold, that one drive, which featured a heavy dose of Zach Charbonnet and the running game, was a good start even if the offense is still a work in progress.

"The way we were able to run the football like we talked about, mixing in keepers and play-action and even some dropback there on second down early in the drive, it was our style of football," Darnold said. "It's the style we wanted to create in OTAs and even training camp. We started to find our identity that way. Can kind of see to come to life. Like you just mentioned it's August, so there is still a long ways to go in terms of where we want to be as an offense. It was really good to get out there and just take the field as a unit the way we wanted to."

Darnold came away from his first game action with the Seahawks impressed not just with the operation of the offense, and a dominant run game in particular, but also with the atmosphere created by fans.

"First of all, it was awesome to just get out there in front of the 12s in that atmosphere," he said. "I felt like that was kind of a perfect atmosphere. Felt like it was almost November, December already out there in the rain. It was an incredible atmosphere too. Again, like I said last week I think to you guys, just the way the fans came out during the preseason game, it's incredible to see. Football-wise I think offensive line dominated really most the game, which is always great to see. That first group, that second group, even the third and fourth group went out there and played really well together. It felt really good to get out there in front of the 12s."