Much is being made of a Pro Football Talk article detailing the structure of the Sam Darnold contract with the Seahawks, basically pointing out that the Seahawks can escape the contract after just one season due to the guarantee structure. Seeing some comments about the contract online makes me think that some are taking this the wrong way so I wanted to explain a bit about the Seahawks approach to contracts.
First of all the basics of the contract as reported by PFT:
Darnold has a $37.5 million salary in 2025. This is fully guaranteed. Florio makes no mention of a signing bonus, but my assumption would be $30 million though in the grand scheme of things that doesn’t make too much of a difference.
Darnold has a $27.5 million salary in 2026. $17.5 million is guaranteed for injury and will be fully guaranteed on the 5th day of the waiver period in 2026.
Darnold has a non guaranteed $35.5 million salary in 2027.
There are up to $15 million in incentives on top of this base package.
So the first thing to note is that this structure is very consistent with all Seahawks contracts. While much is made of teams like the Bengals and Packers who refuse to guarantee anything outside of the signing bonus not much is made of the Seahawks who have a somewhat similar contract pattern.
Seattle has no issues with injury guarantees for their star players, but as far as full guarantees go, they are only willing to fully guarantee the first year of a contract. The team will then have some type of future guarantees all of which will have a vesting date that is five days after the Super Bowl. The date allows the Seahawks to escape the funding rule requirements but is early enough to provide some security for their players (in a sense this functions similar to the 2nd year roster bonuses the Packers, Bengals, and Steelers use).
This structure is consistent across the board for Seattle. Russell Wilson’s last contract with the Seahawks had $70 million fully guaranteed at signing which is exactly what he earned in the year of signing. DK Metcalf had $31 million fully guaranteed at signing which was exactly what he earned in the first year of the extension. Geno Smith’s full guarantee covered his first year’s salary and that was it. So while yes it is possible that they could cut Darnold after 1 year, you could say that about every single player that Seattle has signed over the last 10 years.
That doesn’t mean this is an eye popping contract for Darnold, but unless you thought that Darnold was going to be considered a high end starter the numbers fit in fine with this market of player. The three contracts that you would compare Darnold with are those of Smith, Baker Mayfield, and Derek Carr. Three of those players signed three year contracts while Carr’s is virtually a three year contract with a fourth fluff year thrown in to boost the APY higher. Here are the key metrics of each deal:
| Name | 3Y Total | 3Y APY | Upside Value | Full guar. | Injury guar. | % Full | % injury |
| Darnold | $100,500,000 | $33,500,000 | $115,500,000 | $37,500,000 | $55,000,000 | 37.3% | 54.7% |
| Mayfield | $100,000,000 | $33,333,333 | $115,000,000 | $40,000,000 | $50,000,000 | 40.0% | 50.0% |
| Carr | $100,000,000 | $33,333,333 | $100,000,000 | $60,000,000 | $100,000,000 | 60.0% | 100.0% |
| Smith | $75,000,000 | $25,000,000 | $105,000,000 | $27,300,000 | $40,000,000 | 36.4% | 53.3% |
The guarantee levels more or less mimics the Smith and Mayfield deals. Mayfield got a slightly stronger guarantee at signing while Darnold received slightly more injury protection. The incentive package is designed to keep him in line with Mayfield. None compared to Carr’s guarantee package. Carr was considered more of a sure thing compared to the others.
Here are the funning cash flows of the contract:
| Name | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
| Darnold | $37,500,000 | $65,000,000 | $100,500,000 |
| Mayfield | $30,000,000 | $60,000,000 | $100,000,000 |
| Carr | $30,000,000 | $60,000,000 | $100,000,000 |
| Geno | $27,500,000 | $50,000,000 | $75,000,000 |
Darnold has a far better cash payout this year than any of the others. That is the tradeoff to falling short on the full guarantee. That number continues to be in his favor through two years, before everyone, other than Smith, evens out in the end.
If there is a spot where Darnold missed, once it was accepted that this was his salary level, it is his two year value. Here is how the salaries are paid out as a percentage of the three year value.
| Name | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
| Darnold | 37.3% | 64.7% | 100.0% |
| Mayfield | 30.0% | 60.0% | 100.0% |
| Carr | 30.0% | 60.0% | 100.0% |
| Geno | 36.7% | 66.7% | 100.0% |
Darnold and Smith not surprisingly are very close in year 1 but Smith earns almost 67% of his contract through the 2nd year. Considering this is the same team Darnold probably should have been at something like $66.5 or $67 million after two years.
The talk about that guarantee is not really something I would be concerned about. I think his contract is very fair within the market. I guess one could make a case that he should have earned more money and landed a Daniel Jones style deal, but everyone thought the Jones contract was ultra risky when signed and when a player like that bombs everyone signed soon after is similarly impacted. Neither Mayfield nor Smith felt strong enough to go deeper into free agency to search for more and I think this is where Darnold belongs. In any case those are completely different arguments to consider here. This is simply a Seahawks style contract and I wouldn’t read too much more into it than that.