Sam Darnold is back, “really striving” to get all the way back.
The Super Bowl-winning quarterback said his injured glute and hip area responded well to practicing Wednesday for the first time since he got hurt five plays into the NFL kickoff game two weeks earlier. Darnold got more first-team reps in practice Thursday, and is eyeing starting Sunday when the Seahawks (2-0) play the Commanders (0-2) in Landover, Maryland.
“I’m really striving for that,” Darnold said before practice Thursday. “But, again, like I said, I’m just taking it day by day.
“Also, don’t want to jinx anything.”
Darnold did a regimen of stretching with a band then had a rope around his waist stepping against a resistance machine during warmups for practice Thursday.
The Seahawks listed him as a limited participant in practice Wednesday. That means he did not do his normal practice load of plays — which is 100% of the first-team offenses reps.
Darnold said he felt soreness, of course, following his first on-field work with his teammates in two full weeks, but otherwise he felt good.
The team’s coaches, doctors and athletic-training staff were seeing how Darnold felt Thursday before deciding how much more of the game-plan, first-team reps to give him in practices to end this week.
Coach Mike Macdonald said Wednesday the Seahawks will know by the end of the day Friday whether Darnold will start after missing only one full game, or if Drew Lock will start at quarterback against Washington. The team leaves for the D.C. area Friday afternoon following practice in Renton.
“Feeling good,” Darnold said before practice Thursday. “I think for me, especially this week, just taking it day by day, continuing to balance the reps and do everything I need to get ready.
“The plan is to just continually increase the reps, and, yeah, as long as I keep feeling good and progressing the way that I have been continue to up the reps throughout the week.
He was talking in a press conference his team reserves each Thursday afternoon for the quarterback that’s going to start that week’s game.
Lock did that press conference last Thursday. Then he made his first Seattle start since Dec. 2023 last Sunday. The veteran backup completed 19 of 26 passes for 235 yards and three touchdowns to Jaxon Smith-Njigba in the team’s 31-7 victory at the Arizona Cardinals.
Lock is the NFL’s second-highest rated passer through two games, in the 7 1/2 quarters he’s played since Darnold got hurt on a sack from behind by New England‘s Dre’Mont Jones Sept. 9.
Darnold feared a long-term, possibly season-ending hip injury when he limped out of Lumen Field and got transported to Harborview Medical Center during Seattle’s opening-game home win over the Patriots.
“Lot of different emotions. A lot of possibilities, in terms of how long I’d be out, and possibilities of different injuries,” Darnold said.
“Very happy to be here and standing in front of you guys today.”
The 29-year-old quarterback said he gained an appreciation and perspective on real life in his couple hours getting a C-T scan and tests at Harborview Medical Center, a short transport up onto Seattle’s Capitol Hill from Lumen Field during the game. He watched the final minutes of Lock playing for him and his team’s win over New England on his phone.
“Yeah, it was different, really different at Harborview,” the $105 million QB said.
He saw patients there “and the pain that they were in, what people are dealing with when they are in the hospital. Because it’s a trauma hospital. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on,” Darnold said.
“I will say this: Just the perspective on life that I got while going into the hospital, seeing some of the people and what they are dealing with, like that was eye-opening. Especially in the position I was in, worrying about the injury and how long I was going to be out, it was good to get that perspective.”
Not only was Darnold concerned his 2026 season might be over five plays into it, he fretted over how the injury if was indeed to his hip might affect his career.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah,” he said. “I was…like I said, there were so many different things that were running through my mind. And that was one of them.
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