Super Bowl 2026: Sam Darnold and Drake Maye clash in Hollywood vs The Successor as the NFL's best quarterback stories of the season
Watch the New England Patriots against the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl 60 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, live on Sky Sports NFL from 10pm on Sunday with kickoff at 11.30pm.
Sunday 8 February 2026 10:25, UK
It is the quarterbacks. It is always the quarterbacks. Only until it isn't.Â
Until it is a Kenneth Walker clinic in ground control. Until it is DeMarcus Lawrence against Will Campbell. Until it is Milton Williams or Christian Barmore against Anthony Bradford. Until it is Rashid Shaheed against special teams ace Brenden Schooler. Until it is Mike Vrabel clock management. Until it is Mike Macdonald's simulated pressures.
Super Bowl 60 can be a game built on stubborn intricacies between two soaring defenses and two supremely-football-smart head coaches, with the potential to be low-scoring while reliant on shrewd, calculated, punt-pristine field position. For a moment it might well have been a game built on the loss of Nick Emmanwori after a mid-week injury scare, but Seattle's prized nickel has the green light to go.
But it can also be a game that mundanely and yet tantalisingly rests on the shoulders of the NFL's two greatest quarterback stories this season. The latter promises the greatest show.
Drake Maye. The surprise MVP contender deemed the long-term answer to New England's GOAT-stricken void under center since the days of Tom Brady. And Sam Darnold. The cinematic comeback story from the depths of journeyman ridicule-meets-irrelevance to Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl hero.
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Super Bowl Sunday has arrived in San Francisco, and the NFL is primed to crown one of its most wide-open seasons in recent memory. The New England Patriots enter as the resurrected evil empire, seeking to reclaim the throne of their Brady-inspired dynasty years having lured football into thinking they were gone for good - not so fast. The Seattle Seahawks storm into Santa Clara as the most frightening defense in football, orchestrated by a coaching genius, spearheaded by the league's leading wide receiver in Jaxon Smith-Njigba and piloted by a man in Darnold few, even now, can quite believe is here after the most treacherous of New York Jets and Carolina Panthers-ridden routes to the top.
"I think players know that winning a Super Bowl changes your life," quarterback Kirk Cousins told Sky Sports NFL this week. "No one can deny that if when you wake up Sunday morning and you go to bed Sunday night, you know your life's going to change in a pretty drastic way because you play in this game.
"There is a pain of regret, certainly, when you lose, and that's a tough thing to be aware of as you're on the way to the stadium. Because you know that if I don't play my best game, this could be something that bothers me the rest of my life. There's a weight there."
Patriots players so often speak of a wave of expectation, of legacy, of history that hits upon entering the team facility. For two decades New England tormented the rest of the NFL with six Super Bowl wins behind Brady and Bill Belichick; sustained dominance always comes with the threat of lofty projections and fish bowl scrutiny.
For none perhaps more so than Maye, who was drafted third overall in 2024 as a prospective successor to the league's greatest ever player in Brady after the Patriots had trudged through quarterback purgatory with Cam Newton, Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe. In just year two he would catapult his way into MVP contention with the best completion percentage and passer rating in the league while guiding his side to the AFC East crown and the No 2 seed.
Maye has feasted as football's most prolific splash-play slam-dunker, defying a chapter of defense designed to eradicate chunk gains and merging both pocket dissection with out-of-structure creation to present the Patriots with their new face of the franchise.
"I probably realised that before I got here," said head coach Vrabel on how special Maye is. "It's a large part of the reason I wanted to be here. There were plays in training camp he made, the accuracy outside the pocket or on the move, the way he plays the position, he has an athletic nature to the way he plays. I think that's somewhat unique.
"Everybody has a different skill set, he's comfortable in the pocket, he has the ability to transfer up in the pocket, to make moves, to make throws off platform and at different angles."
Victory on Sunday would see Maye become the first quarterback since Brady to win the Super Bowl in the same year as his playoff debut. He would also follow in the footsteps of Brady in lifting the Lombardi Trophy in his second season in the NFL.
"He is a tremendous player, he really is," Seahawks head coach Macdonald said this week. "He's strong. He's fast. All the things. Great arm talent, great decision-making. We've got to be on our stuff up front."
Maye threw for 4,394 yards and 31 touchdowns to just eight interceptions during the regular-season, before becoming the first quarterback ever to win three games against top-five defenses in a single playoff campaign after the Patriots eliminated the No 5-ranked Los Angeles Chargers, No 1-ranked Houston Texand and No 2-ranked Denver Broncos.
"His maturation process is second to none," said Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs. "One of the best I've ever seen from a quarterback position. He's still super young, which is crazy. He's had a lot of success, but as I have grown closer to him, I'm a huge fan of him.
"He's like a mini inspiration. To be that young, be that mature and be able to play at a high level is something that I always wanted when I was a young player. I'm just happy to be a part of this thing."
Darnold meanwhile looms as one of football's greatest individual comeback stories. Taken as the No 3 overall pick at the 2018 Draft, he spent three turbulent years with the Jets - including his infamous "seeing ghosts" game against the Patriots - before being shipped off to the Panthers, where a losing battle for the starting job against Baker Mayfield plunged his career further into doubt.
He subsequently spent a season as understudy to Brock Purdy in San Francisco, before reviving his career with a standout season for the Minnesota Vikings after flourishing in the absence of the injured J.J. McCarthy.
It took him five teams and eight years, but here Darnold is ready to lead out Seattle at the NFL's coveted showpiece finale.
"I think the story of Sam Darnold has hooked me this week," former NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III told Sky Sports.
"Drake Maye, second-year player, yes he and Mike Vrabel can become the new Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. But when you look at Sam Darnold, going from being a guy that saw ghosts to being a ghostbuster is something that's so special.
"Everybody loves a comeback story. He has the best one. He was written off. Nobody believed in him anymore. It took him eight years to finally get to the point where people looked at him as a starter.
"Now he can re-write that and win a Super Bowl before Lamar Jackson, before Baker Mayfield and Josh Allen, all of whom were drafted in his class. That storyline is the one you write for Hollywood."
Darnold this year became the second quarterback ever behind Brady to register back-to-back 14-win seasons as he finished 323 of 477 passing for 4,048 yards and 25 touchdowns to 14 interceptions in the league's No 3-ranked scoring offense. For so long he had been consumed as yet another Jets mishap, as yet another ill-fated high Draft pick, as yet another young quarterback on which most had given him.
Fortunately, the one matter whose opinion mattered the most didn't give up.
"I can relate to his ups and downs, finding the right place for him, incredibly happy for him," Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Mayfield told Sky Sports.
"After being in Carolina together and sharing some stories together and we realised we needed the right fit and situation and he found it.
"It's credit to him for sticking it out, staying true to who he is and staying confident."
In a weird way, in a good way, the Darnold story feels as if it has been overtold this season. A fixation on his rise, though, only underlines the extent of his feat, and the depth of the hole in which his career had been. It would take extraordinary mental resilience and unwavering self-belief to claw his way back into the light.
"I'm proud of Sam, everything he's overcome from the time he got drafted to when he signed with the Seahawks," said Chicago Bears wide receiver DJ Moore, who played with Maye in Carolina.
"It's been a journey, I'm proud of him, the way he bounced back and didn't listen to the outside noise. He's a great leader, he comes to you and talks to you, for the most part he's the same guy day in day out. Quiet but you understand his presence is known."
Darnold has been an aggressive executor of Klint Kubiak's Seahawks offense, feeding an electric Smith-Njigba, converting the opportunities of a dominant running game and willingly taking dangerous chances through the air. He was near-spotless in Seattle's NFC Championship win over the Los Angeles Rams, out-duelling MVP winner Matthew Stafford with arguably the best performance of his career.
"He is an attacker," said Cousins. "He's turned the ball over at times. I appreciate the aggressive mentality, the playmaker mentality.
"I think that the longer he's played there, I think the more he's settled in to understanding the best way for them to win and how he can help. And I get finding that balance between being aggressive and also letting the game come to him. So I do think when you play New England, you know, they can beat you if you start beating yourself.
"And so it's very important that Sam and the Seahawks protect the football, but they're plenty good. I don't think they need to chase anything. They can let the game come to him and the explosive plays will be there."
It is the Hollywood of Darnold against The Successor in Drake Maye. It is also Seattle's 'Dark Side' defense against New England's Evil Empire defense. The Seahawks ranked first in fewest points allowed per game last season, followed by the Patriots in fourth.
Maye and Darnold will not directly face off. Nor, perhaps, will they decide Sunday's game. But they are the storylines of the NFL's final two, and of a season that has thrived on its art of mystery and surprise.
Watch the New England Patriots against the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl 60 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California on Sunday February 8, with coverage under way at 10pm live on Sky Spots NFL ahead of kick-off at approximately 11.30pm
