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How close did Titans really come to signing Sam Darnold last offseason?
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- How close did Titans really come to signing Sam Darnold last offseason?
The Tennessee Titans needed a quarterback. Free agent Sam Darnold needed a home. Yet the natural pairing between the NFL's top available veteran quarterback for 2025 and the NFL's quarterback-neediest team never materialized.
According to several sources with knowledge of the matter, the pairing never even came particularly close to fruition.
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Multiple Titans sources, who spoke to The Tennessean on condition of anonymity, all boiled their recollections of the matter to a similar conclusion: Titans coaches had some interest in pursuing Darnold, but the personnel department wasn't as enthusiastic.
Now the Titans (1-9) host Darnold and the team that landed him, the Seattle Seahawks (7-3), at Nissan Stadium on Nov. 23 (noon CT, FOX). Darnold leads the NFL in yards per pass attempt this season (9.3) and ranks second in completion percentage (70.2%), fourth in success rate (52.5%) and seventh in quarterback rating (105.0).
By adjusted net yardage per attempt ― the quarterback metric long considered to be most correlated with team success ― Darnold's mark of 8.40 through 10 games leads the NFL and ranks among the top 20 seasons of the Super Bowl era.
By contrast, the Titans opted to pick quarterback Cam Ward No. 1 overall in 2025 rather than pursue Darnold. Ten games into his career, he is at or near the bottom of the NFL in every meaningful QB statistic. His ANY/A mark of 3.98 qualifies as one of the 25 worst marks since 2000 among passers who started at least 10 games.
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The gulf between Darnold's success and Ward's lack of it isn't the only reason the Seahawks are Super Bowl contenders and the Titans are in position to earn a second straight No. 1 draft pick. But it's a pretty huge factor.
Inside Titans' pursuit (or lack thereof) of QB Sam Darnold
Darnold, picked No. 3 overall in 2018 by the New York Jets , had a career year in 2024 with the Minnesota Vikings . Playing for his fourth team in four years, he threw for 4,319 yards and 35 touchdowns ― both career highs ― and led the Vikings to 14 wins. Once cast off as a bust now turned a suitable backup, Darnold played well enough to earn himself a contract worth more than $30 million a year.
After struggling through coach Brian Callahan's first year in Nashville behind quarterbacks Will Levis and Mason Rudolph , the Titans were in the market for 2025. First-year general manager Mike Borgonzi had roughly $60 million in salary cap space available, the ninth-most in the NFL. Needs at tackle, outside linebacker and receiver were obvious, in addition to quarterback. But that No. 1 overall pick afforded him control no other QB-needy team had.
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As sources told The Tennessean, Titans coaches were interested in evaluating the veteran quarterbacks who could come available. Not just Darnold, who could have returned to Minnesota via franchise tag or contract extension, but also former New Orleans and Oakland quarterback Derek Carr , who retired rather than facing the market.
The front office never loved the idea. Even if signing Darnold meant trading the No. 1 pick in exchange for a massive haul of draft picks, there wasn't belief the roster would be strong enough to seriously contend within the first two, cheaper years of Darnold's contract. The strategy of signing a win-now quarterback to a roster that wouldn't be ready to compete felt tantamount to signing up for roughly seven wins a year and wading back into the quarterback market in two or three years.
So the Seahawks, who finished 10-7 but missed the playoffs in 2024, traded quarterback Geno Smith to the Las Vegas Raiders in exchange for a third-round draft pick, clearing space to sign Darnold to a three-year, $100.5 million contract. The Titans held on to the No. 1 pick and selected Ward, despite offers to trade back.
Titans vs Seahawks lessons to be learned
The man tasked with scheming for Darnold this week, Titans defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson, worked as the Jets' defensive backs coach for Darnold's first three years as a pro. In that time, Darnold went 13-25 as a starter. Among quarterbacks who started at least 20 games in that span, Darnold ranked dead last in ANY/A.
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The Jets traded Darnold to Carolina, where he went 8-9 in 17 starts across two injury-addled seasons. Free agency landed him a backup role in San Francisco , followed by a backup role in Minnesota, where a preseason injury to rookie J.J. McCarthy gave Darnold the chance that finally pushed him toward fulfilling his potential.
"Sam has always had the talent," Wilson said. "But just like when you're a rookie quarterback in the National Football League, you're learning on the job. You just see a guy that has matured, that took his lumps in the league early. He's had success over the last couple years. Same charisma, same personality. He understands where to go with the ball."
Titans interim coach Mike McCoy, one of the stewards helping develop Ward, has seen it every which way. He has coached offenses led by young, first-round quarterbacks ( Tim Tebow , Josh Rosen , Trevor Lawrence ) and veterans signed off the street (Jake Delhomme, Peyton Manning ). He coached a San Diego team that won a lot of games behind Philip Rivers , a homegrown former first-round pick who lived up to his billing and could end up enshrined in the Hall of Fame someday.
The disadvantages to betting on the young player are self-evident.
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"When you have the veteran, they've done it before," McCoy said. "And then there's the rookie situation where there's the first time that you go in there and you see a team, you see a certain defensive coordinator for the first time, and you take your lumps."
Darnold took his lumps. Ward is taking his lumps now.
Darnold's as lump-free as he has ever been these days, not that that matters for the Jets. While he's lighting up the NFL on his fifth team, the Jets are back in the market for another first-round quarterback. If Ward follows Darnold's trajectory and becomes a star somewhere other than Nashville, that's no solace.
"But young players' got to learn somehow," McCoy quipped.
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Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com . Follow Nick on X @nicksuss . Subscribe to the Talkin' Titans newsletter for updates sent directly to your inbox.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Did Titans seriously pursue QB Sam Darnold before drafting Cam Ward
