{"id":178008,"date":"2026-02-14T14:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T14:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/178008\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T14:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T14:45:07","slug":"letters-to-sports-sam-darnold-and-his-super-bowl-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/178008\/","title":{"rendered":"Letters to Sports: Sam Darnold and his Super Bowl odyssey"},"content":{"rendered":"

p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> <\/p>\n

Pat Haden, Vince Evans, Sean Salisbury, Rodney Peete, Matt Cassel, Todd Marinovich, Rob Johnson, Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart, Mark Sanchez, Caleb Williams. Just a few of the great USC quarterbacks who went on to have NFL careers, yet never won a Super Bowl. Congratulations to Sam Darnold<\/a>, the first USC quarterback to win the Super Bowl. I will always remember Sam\u2019s amazing performance in the 2017 Rose Bowl game against Penn State. Sam was a redshirt freshman that year. He had the heart of a champion then and still does now.<\/p>\n

Dave Ring
Manhattan Beach<\/p>\n

Sam Darnold\u2019s odyssey, from first-round bust to Super Bowl champion, is straight out of a Hollywood movie. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Darnold proved success in football, like life, is not always linear. He has now won more Super Bowls than his 2017 draft class colleagues, Baker Mayfield, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson, combined.<\/p>\n

Mark S. Roth
Playa Vista<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> Pat Haden, Vince Evans, Sean Salisbury, Rodney Peete, Matt Cassel, Todd Marinovich, Rob Johnson, Carson Palmer,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[29160,37911,30313,949,48,52,51,1838,47,50,49,63,752,9442,1417,54021,7496,84614,84613,8934,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-178008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-bad-bunny","9":"tag-casey-wasserman","10":"tag-field-goal","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-headlines","14":"tag-la-news","15":"tag-letter","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","18":"tag-los-angeles-news","19":"tag-los-angeles-times","20":"tag-nfl","21":"tag-player","22":"tag-point","23":"tag-sam-darnold","24":"tag-sport","25":"tag-super-bowl-mvp","26":"tag-super-bowl-odyssey","27":"tag-victory","28":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}