Sam Darnold, a 28-year-old quarterback playing for his fifth NFL team in eight years, is preparing to lead the Seattle Seahawks to a possible championship in Super Bowl 60 on Sunday, but getting to that moment will require a high degree of mental resilience, he told The Athletic on Friday.
Darnold started his career with high expectations as the No. 3 pick in the 2018 NFL Draft. Instead, he lost more games than he won in his first three seasons, was traded, and ultimately served as a backup quarterback for multiple teams for multiple years. He won the starting spot with the Minnesota Vikings in 2024, but after suffering a season-ending knee injury in the main competition for the position, he led the Vikings to a 14-3 record that season, much to the surprise of many pundits.
His performance led to him signing a three-year contract with Seattle in March worth a total of $100 million. Now on the precipice of an NFL championship, Darnold says the resilient mindset he first learned from his parents helped him overcome his mistakes and self-doubt and revive his career.
“My dad worked as a plumber and my mom was a physical education teacher, so it didn’t really matter what their day was like. For me and my sister, they were always consistent,” Darnold told The Athletic. “It didn’t matter what happened at work. My dad would always play catch with me after work. So I feel like I developed resilience naturally.”
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Darnold said he still relies on his family to keep him mentally balanced. “My family has contributed a lot to my ability to get through things when things are bad, and they keep me grounded when things are good,” Darnold said.
Resilience is a key component of success, and psychologists agree. Resilience helps you bounce back from mistakes while maintaining enough confidence to continue taking calculated risks. Psychotherapist Amy Morin wrote on CNBC Make It in March 2021 that teaching children how to bounce back from failure and learn important lessons they can apply later should be the goal of every parent who wants to raise mentally tough and resilient children.
“The most successful people achieved their goals while failing along the way,” Morin writes. “Children who are successful later in life focus their attention on what went wrong and how they can fix it. They have a growth mindset that helps them turn failure into a positive learning experience.”
3 sentence mantra for resilience
Early in his career, Darnold was too focused on his mistakes, he said in an interview with Fox Sports that aired on Jan. 30. He said he would allow his performance on the field to have a disproportionate impact on his mood and overall mental health.
He said reflecting on his parents’ long-held views prompted a mental shift that helped Darnold turn his career around. “Sometimes mistakes happen and you learn from them,” he says. “You don’t want to make the same mistake twice, but it’s bound to happen over a long career.”
Darnold also told the San Francisco Standard on Thursday that he was inspired by a quote from Jerry Rice, one of the greatest players in NFL history.
“Jerry Rice said there was never a perfect practice or a perfect game,” Darnold said. “That’s the mindset I try to keep in mind: It’s not always going to be perfect, but how can I bounce back from failure to continue to improve my team and myself.”
Now, instead of dwelling on the mistakes (which are bound to happen one way or another), Darnold tries to “put the bad plays and bad games out of my memory” and move forward with a positive attitude, he told The Athletic.
When things don’t go as planned, he turns to his mantra of resilience, he said, “‘It happens. That’s football. We’re not always going to be perfect.'”
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