Who's The Next Sam Darnold? 5 QBs That Fit The Bill For 2026 And Beyond

When the Seattle Seahawks take the field against the New England Patriots on Wednesday, it'll mark the culmination of Sam Darnold's comeback. The team Darnold quarterbacked to a Super Bowl title will be celebrated one last time, with the banner commemorating the victory being unveiled ahead of the season-opening matchup.

Can we see another quarterback have such an epic turnaround soon? That's the question being asked by any NFL team that doesn't already have a great quarterback in place. Who, of all the brutal disappointments at football's most important position, is actually a Pro Bowl passer capable of leading your team to a Super Bowl and winning it?

The most honest answer is that there isn't another Darnold this year; such a delayed arrival in the NFL is just too rare. Baker Mayfield enjoyed a similar career renaissance a year earlier in 2023 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. However, Mayfield wasn't nearly as bad as Darnold was before his emergence. 

And before you go ruling anyone out as just too crappy to become a great quarterback, let's remember who Darnold was two years ago. He was 27, a former top-five pick of the New York Jets, having flamed out there and bounced to the Carolina Panthers and San Francisco 49ers. His only start in 2023 was a Week 18 rest-your-starters game, in which he threw one touchdown pass and lost to Carson Wentz. 

If you ranked all 39 quarterbacks who threw at least 1,000 passes from 2018-23, Darnold ranks dead last in passer rating at 78.3. He was 21-35 as a starter at that point, with 63 career touchdown passes and 56 interceptions.

With all that, Darnold still got a $10 million deal from the Minnesota Vikings in 2024, but only really got the opportunity he got for a breakout year because first-round pick J.J. McCarthy sustained a season-ending injury in the preseason. Then boom, 14-3 as a starter, 35 touchdown passes against 12 picks, good enough to land a three-year, $100 million deal from the Seattle Seahawks. 

Another 14-3 season came after, this time with 25 touchdown passes and 14 picks, but played enough to win a Super Bowl.

So that's what you're looking for.

Scanning the league, we've identified five quarterbacks who have dealt with similar struggles to Darnold, either already discarded or trending toward being let go by teams that drafted them with high picks. You might not even be aware of where they're playing now, but their résumé today looks better than Darnold's did two years ago.

Like Darnold, Mac Jones was a first-round pick in the AFC East, and arguably did more with his first team, making the Pro Bowl as a rookie with the New England Patriots in 2021. He went 10-7 as a rookie, helped New England to the playoffs and threw 22 touchdowns. Then he and his team got worse, going 2-9 in Bill Belichick's last season. He got traded to the Jaguars, then signed a two-year, $8 million deal with the 49ers in 2025.

Jones played well last year, going 5-3 filling in for an injured Brock Purdy, throwing 13 touchdowns against six interceptions. Had he not signed a two-year deal, he would have been coveted as a free agent, but the 49ers resisted the temptation to trade him, wanting the same security of a solid backup in case Purdy got injured again.

He totally fits the Darnold profile: 27 years old, high draft pick, initial struggles, 25-32 as a starter and bounced around to two other teams. He just needs an injury to get on the field this season, but if that happens, he has the talent around him to have a Darnold-level breakout. If that doesn't happen, he should be a top choice among the veteran options in free agency in spring 2027.

Same profile: former first-round pick (Chicago Bears), discarded for a late-round pick (Pittsburgh Steelers), did well to get a $40 million contract from the New York Jets and again traded for a sixth-round pick to Kansas City. His overall numbers are better than Darnold's were two years ago: 52 touchdowns against 32 interceptions, and he rushed for 1,143 yards as a quarterback in Chicago in 2022. He is 16-37 as a starter — and that's with a 4-2 record in Pittsburgh — but now finds himself the top backup to Patrick Mahomes, who is coming back from a torn ACL.

So it would take another Mahomes injury for Fields to get any real opportunity to show what he can do this year. But even a small window could help him, with better coaching and a stronger supporting cast than what he's had. Fields has 12 touchdowns against two interceptions in the last two seasons, with another nine rushing touchdowns, so him finding success as a dual-threat passer is something you can't exactly rule out.

I'm including Malik Willis here because he's a good answer if you're simply looking for an unexpected breakout star at quarterback, but otherwise he doesn't fit the profile. Willis is 27, yes, but he's barely played at all in four NFL seasons — 3-3 as a starter between the Tennessee Titans and Green Bay Packers, with all of 155 career pass attempts. For perspective, Darnold has 131 in his four playoff games alone.

But Willis represents unrealized potential — without the bad body of work to overcome — so he got a three-year, $68 million deal from the Miami Dolphins with $45 million guaranteed. He was with Jeff Hafley in Green Bay and now joins him in Miami, albeit with a depleted roster that many think will be the worst in the NFL. Wide receiver Tyreek Hill is gone and fellow standout pass-catcher Jaylen Waddle was traded to the Denver Broncos, so the challenge for Willis in 2026 is to cobble together enough success that the Dolphins don't feel compelled to use what will be a very high draft pick in 2027 on a quarterback to replace him in their long-term plans.

Speaking of quarterbacks who could pass for the next Darnold, we should mention Indianapolis Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson, who is a high draft pick who has struggled early on, much like Darnold. He's still only 24 and has only 15 career starts with an 8-7 record, but if he were to get a fresh start and play well, you'd hear him compared to Darnold.

McCarthy went 6-4 as a starter last year, so you might wonder: Is he bad enough right now to be the next Darnold? Yes, he is.

McCarthy has more interceptions (12) than touchdown passes (11) in his NFL career, and if you look at the 49 quarterbacks with 200-plus pass attempts over the last two seasons, he ranks 47th in passer rating, ahead of only Shedeur Sanders and Anthony Richardson. His completion percentage — 58% — is also 47th, and in interception percentage, he leads the way at 4.9%.

That Minnesota would so quickly hand the franchise over to Kyler Murray shows what they think of McCarthy (who is QB3 behind Murray and Carson Wentz). He still has two years on his rookie contract, but you'd think he's either traded for a late-round pick or cut at some point unless Murray struggles so much that McCarthy gets another shot in Minnesota.

Did you even know Zach Wilson was in New Orleans? Or that he spent a full season in Denver? Before you immediately think that Wilson is too bad to be the next Darnold, just remember that he lines up very closely with who Darnold was two years ago. Top-three pick of the Jets, went 12-21 as a starter, traded in a pick swap to the Broncos (where he didn't play a snap), signed with the Dolphins and couldn't beat out seventh-rounder Quinn Ewers for the look-see when Tua Tagovailoa was done. If you rank the 36 quarterbacks in passer rating with 1,000 career pass attempts since 2021, he's dead last at 36th.

Wilson has just 23 career touchdown passes against 25 interceptions, and yet he lands in New Orleans, where Tyler Shough is set as the starter but still capable of injury or ineffectiveness. He's on a $1.4 million deal, within $200,000 of the league minimum for veterans, but he's young (he turns 27 in August) and would have a chance to reset himself if he could get on the field and play well, two decently big ifs given what he's been in five NFL seasons. If it seems incredible or impossible, No. 35 on that list of 36 quarterbacks is Bryce Young, who could easily get a huge contract to stay with the Carolina Panthers with any kind of success in 2026.