Sam Darnold's Hip Injury Opens the Door for Drew Lock's Signature Seahawks Moment
A season-opening injury looked like the worst possible start — until the backup quarterback made it Seattle's biggest storyline of the night instead.
Seahawks starting quarterback Sam Darnold left Wednesday night's 13-10 win over the Patriots with a hip injury after being sacked by Dre'Mont Jones on third-and-6 from the New England 46 — Seattle's sixth offensive play of the game — and was ruled out before halftime, handing the offense to 29-year-old backup Drew Lock for the rest of a Super Bowl LX rematch. Head coach Mike Macdonald confirmed afterward that a fracture has been ruled out, genuinely encouraging news given that type of injury typically costs six months to a year, though Darnold's CT scan came back "encouraging but inconclusive" and he's scheduled for an MRI Thursday that should provide a real recovery timeline.
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Seattle managed zero points through the first half and just a single field goal through three quarters with Lock at the controls, before rallying for 13 unanswered fourth-quarter points to steal the win. Lock finished with 187 passing yards and a touchdown without a single turnover, and receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, 24, the reigning NFL Offensive Player of the Year, turned a short fourth-down throw into a 45-yard touchdown that flipped the game. Lock, a 2019 second-round pick who never won the long-term job in Denver, has bounced between four teams since, and Wednesday marked his first real meaningful action since signing a two-year deal to back up Darnold in Seattle last year. Darnold's MRI results have since come back with genuinely good news: head coach Mike Macdonald said the injury appears to be more of a muscle issue than damage to the hip structure itself, and while Darnold is expected to miss at least Seattle's Week 2 trip to face the Cardinals, Macdonald added that the hip "is intact and it's good," calling it "really, really good news" given how much worse a structural injury could have been.
With Sam we got some great news back. At this point we can rule out a fracture.— Mike Macdonald, Seahawks head coach
Our take: a quarterback who once looked like a bust himself delivering a clean, turnover-free fourth-quarter comeback on zero notice is the best kind of redemption story in this league, and it says as much about Seattle's roster depth as it does about Lock personally. But the real story is still Darnold's hip — a ruled-out fracture was the first good sign, and the follow-up MRI reading it as a muscle issue rather than structural damage is an even better one, since muscle injuries generally carry a far more predictable, shorter recovery window than anything involving the joint itself. A projected one-game absence against Arizona is a genuinely manageable cost for a team that could easily have been looking at a multi-week or even season-altering outcome from an awkward hip landing like that.
Darnold's Recovery Outlook: What We Still Don't Know
Darnold is sacked by Dre'Mont Jones, injures his hip, and is ruled out before halftime.
Drew Lock throws for 187 yards and a touchdown with zero turnovers in relief.
Doctors describe the injury as a muscle issue rather than structural hip damage; Darnold is expected to miss Week 2 at Arizona.
Seattle got away with a scary start Wednesday night, and the follow-up MRI news is exactly the kind of outcome that lets a scary moment stay a one-week inconvenience instead of a season-altering setback.
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Sources: Field Gulls, Seahawks.com, Yahoo Sports