Sam Darnold will become the first quarterback from USC to start a Super Bowl Sunday while UCLA fans will also have a reason to root for the Seattle Seahawks when they face the New England Patriots in Santa Clara.
Darnold will attempt to become the fourth quarterback to win a Super Bowl in his first season with a team, joining Brad Johnson, Tom Brady and Matthew Stafford. In the regular season, Darnold led Seattle’s turnaround from a non-playoff 10-7 record in 2024 to a NFL best-equaling 14-3 record in 2025 and its first Super Bowl berth since the 2014 season when it lost to New England, 28-24.
He was fifth in the league in passing yards with 4,048.
Darnold signed a three-year, $100.5 million contract with the Seahawks on March 13, his fourth team in four seasons and fifth in a eight-season NFL career that began with the New York Jets selecting him as a third choice in the 2018 draft. He will be the first of the five quarterbacks selected in that draft’s first round to play in a Super Bowl.
He joined Seattle after one season with the Minnesota Vikings, leading the league in passing yards, 4,319, and completions, 361, leading them to a 14-3 record, their best since 1998, when they were 15-1.
Darnold was the San Francisco 49ers’ backup quarterback in 2023, played in 10 regular-season games, including starting the regular-season finale, but did not play in the postseason, as the 49ers advanced to the Super Bowl, losing to the Kansas City Chiefs, 25-22, in overtime.
Darnold was traded by the Jets to the Carolina Panthers in 2021, starting 11 games that season.
He lost the starting job to Baker Mayfield during the 2022 preseason, suffered a high ankle sprain in the final preseason game, was on injured reserve until week 10 and didn’t play until week 12. He started each of Carolina’s final six games, but was not re-signed after the Panthers chose 2021 Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Bryce Young with the first pick in the 2023 draft.
Darnold signed as a free agent with San Francisco in 2023 and beat out Trey Lance to be the backup behind Brock Purdy.
He started 13 games in each of his first two seasons in the league and 12 in his third, but was traded after Jets went 2-14 in the 2020 season, their second-worst record in their history.
In Darnold’s first season as USC’s starting quarterback, 2016, he led it to a victory in the Rose Bowl game and a Pac-12 championship in his second, the most recent time it accomplished those feats.
Darnold’s receiving targets include Jake Bobo, who completed his college career at UCLA in 2022 after playing at Duke from 2018-21. Bobo caught a 17-yard touchdown pass from Darnold in the Seahawks’ 31-27 victory over the Rams in the NFC championship game Jan. 25.
Bobo caught a short pass from Darnold on a third-and-10 play from San Francisco’s 36-yard line he turned into a 16-yard gain on a touchdown drive late in the first half of Seattle’s 41-6 victory in a wild-card round game Jan. 17.
The two postseason catches matched Bobo’s total in 11 regular-season games in 2025.
“Bobo is the man,” Darnold said after the NFC championship game. “He stepped up for us in other ways throughout the season blocking, doing his thing on (special) teams, but he came up big as well last week with that third-down conversion.”
Seattle’s active roster includes three other players from USC — linebacker Uchenna Nwosu, nose tackle Brandon Pili and defensive tackle Leonard Williams.
The Seahawks’ second-leading rusher, former UCLA standout Zach Charbonnet, was placed on the reserve/injured list after tearing an ACL in the wild-card round game.
The Patriots do not have any players from USC or UCLA on their roster.
Sunday’s game will be the 53rd Super Bowl with a least one player from USC on an active roster and 52nd with a least one from UCLA.
The kickoff is set for 3:30 p.m. The game will be televised by NBC.