Durde, Darnold, drinks and a Super Bowl tale of defiance

The gloomiest depths of New York told Sam Darnold he wasn’t meant to be here. Donald Trump told Bad Bunny he wasn’t meant to be here. Transatlantic logistics told Aden Durde he wasn’t meant to be here. Preseason odds told the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks that neither were meant to be here.

And yet here they were, on the Super Bowl 60 stage, on which all were meant to be. A stage on which convention was clobbered, doubters defied, Britons buoyed up by homegrown heroics and a worthy champion crowned.

Seattle tormented Drake Maye with the nous and strangling intensity with which they have tormented most of the league this season. On Sunday they stormed to a 29-13 victory over the Patriots in what served as the fitting underline to a season built on defensive supremacy alongside Darnold’s comeback tale.

Footballing schematics would tell Devon Witherspoon he wasn’t meant to pressure the young New England quarterback so easily and so often, for some kind of restraining order may be issued. The Los Angeles Rams would tell Cooper Kupp he wasn’t meant to be blunting coverages on the way to becoming a double Super Bowl champion. NFL history would tell Kenneth Walker III he wasn’t meant to be Super Bowl MVP, as he became the first running back to win the accolade since Terrell Davis in Super Bowl XXXII following the 1997 season.

At the helm of football’s most stubborn, scariest defense meanwhile lies both Mike Macdonald and British defensive coordinator Durde, who little more than a decade ago was coaching the London Warriors as the soon-to-be-founder of the NFL’s International Player Pathway programme.

Durde had ascended through the ranks inspired by Mike Ditka’s Super Bowl-winning 1985 Chicago Bears, which included his current assistant head coach. Speaking of which, the Buffalo Bills told Leslie Frazier he wasn’t meant to be coaching a Super Bowl team.

“No, not at all,” Durde told Sky Sports, asked if he might have ever dreamed of winning a Super Bowl. “The crazy thing is, Leslie Frazier, who was on that (85 Bears) team, is with us here.

“I think you take each moment as it is, and this is unbelievable – to have my family with me and to know all my family and the people back home that have supported me are watching.

“You have to be who you are to do everything. I’ve loved the sport since I was a kid. In my mind I’ve grown up with the sport, it might not be the same way somebody else grew up with it, but it’s the thing I’ve loved from when I was young.

“My oldest son called me in the week and said ‘my bucket list was going to the Super Bowl and I got to see my dad in the Super Bowl’ and that’s the coolest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

Maye barely had a sniff all game, with the exception of his fourth-quarter 35-yard touchdown strike to Mack Hollins that oh so briefly threatened a prospective fightback. Durde’s No-1 ranked scoring defense sacked him six times, turned one of two interceptions into a pick-six and stole a fumble to hand the 2024 third overall pick a nightmare Super Bowl bow.

It was the reward for a team coached as well as any in the league as Seattle claimed their second Super Bowl title in franchise history.

“I’m just proud of the guys,” said Durde. “They made a commitment at the start of the year to push themselves to play like that every play, and today they went out and showed the best version of themselves.

“I appreciate everything they do. I appreciate the work they do, I like the way we all keep each other accountable. We have a common goal.

“When you’re pushing like that, and you’re getting the results, you’re going forward, that’s when it happens. It happened for this team, and we’ve got to now keep pushing.”

Durde is recognised as the first ever full-time NFL coach to develop his playing and coaching career entirely outside of the United States.

He watched on as his Seahawks defense prompted and pounced upon costly Maye mistakes, at the heart being the outstanding Witherspoon, who planned to celebrate his two sacks and new-found silverware in style.

“I’m finna have a drink, or two… or maybe three. Who knows?” joked Witherspoon post-game.

Seattle had led 9-0 at the break before the fourth of Jason Myers’ Super Bowl-record five field goals extended advantage by just three. Maye was jittery in the face of a Seahawks defense dictating New England’s tempo and the extent of the risks, if any, Darnold might need to take.

They flew to the ball in ravenous squads, harassed Maye all afternoon and ultimately iced the game through Uchenna Nwosu’s pick-six return after a pressure from the blitzing Witherspoon to exemplify Seattle football and its unrelenting nature.

“This is a historic performance,” said former NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick in the Sky Sports Studios.

“The Seahawks offense has essentially waved the white flag on third down in this second half, because they know they could rely on their defense.”

As Seattle leaned on their defense and MVP Walker, Darnold piloted proceedings in a clean and decisive performance that would see the 2018 No 3 overall pick cap his remarkable career resurrection, which had somewhat began in his understudy role at Levi’s Stadium – home to Super Bowl 60 – with the San Francisco 49ers in 2023.

Darnold endured three turbulent years with the New York Jets upon entering the league out of USC, before being cast aside to the Carolina Panthers where he faced a battle for the starting job with former Draft class mate Baker Mayfield. It was then onto a welcome footballing education under Kyle Shanahan, before his revival came to fruition in a standout playoff-clinching year in 2024 with the Minnesota Vikings, where his starting opportunity only arose after an injury to J.J. McCarthy.

Minnesota, though, put their faith in McCarthy during the offseason as Darnold instead signed a $100.5 deal with the Seahawks. We know who won that deal.

“It’s unbelievable,” Darnold said. “Everything that’s happened in my career, but to do it with this team – I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’m so proud of our guys. I can’t say enough great things about our defense and special teams.

“I’m so proud of our guys. I can’t say enough great things about our defense and special teams. We could have been a little bit better on offense, but we won the Super Bowl, so I don’t care about that right now.

“As long as you believe in yourself, anything is possible.”

Darnold finished the game 19 of 38 for 202 yards and a touchdown pass to AJ Barner, the man that had once “seen ghosts” during a blowout defeat to the Patriots returning to crush his former foes’ Lombardi dreams.

“I shared a great moment with my parents and fiancee Katie after the game and I think that’s what kind of got me a little bit. I told my dad and my mom, I’m here because of their belief in me,” Darnold added.

“Some people called me crazy throughout my career for believing in myself so much, but it was because of my parents. It allowed me to go out there and play free and have a ton of confidence.”

Darnold had featured in the same draft class as 2018 No 1 overall pick Baker Mayfield as well as Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson.

“You would not have picked him as the first one to get a world championship,” said Fitzpatrick. “It’s absolutely wild, but also well deserved. What a great team, Seattle proved they’re the best team in football this year.”

Seahawks teammate Leonard Williams, who played with Darnold at the Jets, hailed his “unwavering” attitude in the face of unrelenting scrutiny. At the age of 28, he is long accustomed to those that couldn’t see it, couldn’t envisage it with him, putting faith in himself to play his way to overdue success.

“Sam doesn’t care about the obstacles,” said Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald. “They have tried to put a story and a label on who he is as a person and quarterback, he does not care.

“He’s the same guy every day. All he’s done since he walked in the door has been tremendous player and leader, that’s who he is, that’s how we need to talk about him going forward.”

Seattle have been a lonely picture of consistency by this season’s standards in the NFL, establishing themselves as comfortably the most rounded team in football. Behind Macdonald’s defensive mastery the Seahawks clinched the No 1 seed as NFC West champions before winning a second Super Bowl in franchise history.

“I had 100 per cent confidence. We’ve got the best team and the best fans in the world, the 12s,” said coach Macdonald.

“We never wavered. We believed in each other, and now we’re world champions.

“This is going to go down in the history books. I love our players, they made it happen, they made it come to life and we won the game.”

A fairytale matchup of defiance sandwiched a half-time show of defiance as Grammy-winning artist Bad Bunny celebrated the nations of Latin America amid a period of concerns surrounding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the Unites State.

President Trump had publicly opposed his involvement at the Super Bowl; NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had welcomed his ‘greatness’ with open arms. The result was a pyro-enthused spectacle of Puerto Rican pizazz, during which it was later revealed a real couple, who appeared in the performance, had officially been married. Talk about nudging the boundaries of convention.

As Bad Bunny conquers the world, the Seahawks too govern the landscape for now having teased a new period of perennial contention overseas.

“To come from London and be here, I don’t take any of it for granted, I’m proud,” said Durde.

“Normally I would have fallen asleep at half-time. I’ve got to get back to London. Get this mayhem out the way, I need to go home!”

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: skynews.com