{"id":114726,"date":"2026-01-28T05:04:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T05:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/114726\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T05:04:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T05:04:16","slug":"i-played-qb-with-sam-darnold-in-college-his-perspective-is-his-secret-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/114726\/","title":{"rendered":"I played QB with Sam Darnold in college. His perspective is his secret weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is part of Peak, The Athletic\u2019s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for Peak\u2019s newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Max Browne played quarterback with Sam Darnold for two seasons at USC, in 2015 and 2016. He is now a commentator for college football games on ESPN.<\/p>\n

I was a redshirt sophomore at USC when Sam Darnold showed up in the summer of 2015.<\/p>\n

Cody Kessler was the starting quarterback at the time, one of the top returning signal callers in college football. I was the former Gatorade National High School Player of the Year and Kessler\u2019s backup. That summer, two freshmen joined the QB room: Ricky Town, a five-star quarterback who was the next big USC recruit. And this high-ceiling, late-riser named Sam Darnold.<\/p>\n

Everyone in that position room knew exactly what they signed up for. When you sign to play quarterback at USC, you are choosing competition on a daily basis. And there was a real pressure to carry on the tradition. Every USC starting quarterback that century had been drafted: Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart, Mark Sanchez.<\/p>\n

We all envisioned the same path: We\u2019re here to be the best quarterback in the country, win a national title, win the Heisman and get drafted in the first round.<\/p>\n

It was a highly pressurized environment, and every QB I played with at SC had that competitive edge, that chip on their shoulder. Understandably so. I felt that from Kessler, I felt that from myself, I even felt that from the walk-on quarterbacks in the room.<\/p>\n

I just never felt it from Sam \u2014 even when we competed for the starting job in 2016.<\/p>\n

Sam was certainly competitive \u2014 he wasn\u2019t there to hold a clipboard or anything \u2014 but I never sensed the stress that young quarterbacks are often under. The stress of learning a new playbook. The stress of throwing an interception at practice and becoming gun-shy. That never, ever happened with him. I admired that.<\/p>\n

From the time I first met him, he always had perspective. Football never felt like life or death to him, and it allowed him not to be so intense, like the rest of us USC quarterbacks. It allowed him to just play freely.<\/p>\n

I remember a fall camp practice early in his true freshman season. It was a late-night practice, and there was this off-script play where he was running around in the backfield and threw a 50-yard bomb down the sideline. I was on the sideline and Tee Martin, our offensive coordinator, did a little dance, and his line was: \u201cHe\u2019s a young Brett Favre!\u201d<\/p>\n

You would have never gotten this out of me back then, but I remember after that play thinking: Oh s\u2014. I\u2019m gonna have a battle on my hands.<\/p>\n

Sam had an ease and humble confidence about him without even saying a word. In college, he was a real gunslinger. I played with a lot of quarterbacks who had confidence, but Sam\u2019s speciality was that he almost didn\u2019t process the downside of a mistake. He was almost like: If I make a mistake, all good. He never let it impact his next throw.<\/p>\n

I also never sensed that he got into any of the political games that a lot of us played in our heads: How many reps did this guy get? Oh, he got that play call, I wish they called that one for me. What was his completion percentage in this QB battle?<\/p>\n

A lot of times, quarterbacks are too insecure to ask questions to the other quarterbacks. They don\u2019t want it to be perceived as a weakness that they don\u2019t know something. There was none of that with Sam. He asked me questions: What\u2019s the coverage here? How are you reading this?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ahead of the 2016 season, Sam and I battled for the starting job. To the outside world, it was very much a \u201cme vs. Sam\u201d thing. Between us, on a personal level outside of football, it never felt that way. We always understood the deal. When Sam got the news that I won the starting quarterback job before the season, his temperament didn\u2019t change at all. The very next day, you would have never known. I still felt that ease from him. I admired that, too.<\/p>\n

I got benched for Sam after the third game of the season. A couple of weeks went by, and Sam settled into his role as the next great USC quarterback.<\/p>\n

Sam and I ran within the same friend circle within the team. My condo had the parties after the games, and one night we had a couple of beverages in our system. I was on the little mezzanine, and I\u2019ll never forget that he gave me a bro hug and told me, \u201cAppreciate the way you\u2019ve handled this. Just know that I think you got screwed, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t share that story because I got screwed or want your pity. That\u2019s not my point. I share it because, a decade later, I still appreciate that comment. It came at the lowest point of my life. I had arrived at USC with huge expectations, then spent years waiting and working for my opportunity. So when I lost the job, I was devastated. It was a lonely chapter in my life. A lot of people around me didn\u2019t know what to say, so they wouldn\u2019t say anything. The fact that the guy who did acknowledge my situation was the very guy living out the other path really cut through, like true friendship often does. He just had a levity about him.<\/p>\n

I saw that play out in his NFL career, too. He said to me one time after his challenging rookie season with the Jets, \u201cHey, at the end of the day, I\u2019m a quarterback in the NFL. Life is pretty good.\u201d That wasn\u2019t just lip service. He truly lived that at each stage of his career.<\/p>\n

People ask me sometimes: If you could do one thing over again in your career, what would you do?<\/p>\n

My answer oftentimes is: \u201cI wish I had more fun playing football.\u201d<\/p>\n

People would tell me that in the moment, but I was never able to fully get myself there. It was always so intense for me. You know, the Mamba mentality. The work. The process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I think about guys who were not that way, Sam is the first one that comes to mind. And I think that\u2019s why Sam never lost himself when things got tough during his first eight years in the NFL. He stayed light and kept perspective. That mindset didn\u2019t just help him survive the challenging times \u2014 it propelled him to the Super Bowl.<\/p>\n

\u2014 As told to Jayson Jenks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of Peak, The Athletic\u2019s desk covering the mental side of sports. Sign up for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11590,11496,9,24,55,54,430,22,56,35952,2247,20116],"class_list":["post-114726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-college-football","tag-college-sports","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-new-york-jets","tag-nfl","tag-ny","tag-peak","tag-seattle-seahawks","tag-usc-trojans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}