Salk: Sam Darnold’s rough stretch will have impact on offseason

Last week I asked Seattle Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald about the idea of making a quarterback change, and unsurprisingly he said, no, we’re not going to do that.

A key difference between Seahawks OC and his predecessor

I was maybe a little bit surprised that he even entertained the question because if everything was completely hunky-dory he would have said, that’s a crazy question, of course we’re sticking with Sam and I’m not going to say anything more about it. So obviously there is at least room for consideration here.

I told you last week that I would not bench Sam Darnold, and I still mean that. I would not make that kind of a drastic change. But this is going to become very, very important at the end of this year when the talk will be about extending Sam Darnold, and whether or not you want to pay him $50 million, $55 million, $60 million, which will be the going rate for a quarterback of his ilk who’s won a Super Bowl. And I don’t know how you could possibly entertain doing that after just weeks earlier thinking about benching him for Drew Lock.

Unfortunately, the fact of it for Sam is going to be that the team did perform well when Drew Lock was in there, and that just a few weeks later there were real conversations about whether or not he should be the starting quarterback of the Seahawks.

I hope Sam gets it back together. I hope he has a phenomenal rest of the year. But I think that these are going to be very important data points when paying him his new contract becomes the central focus of our conversation at the end of the season.

This article is a transcript of the video at the top of the post. It is edited for clarity. Catch Mike Salk weekdays from 6-10 a.m. on Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk.

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