Seahawks prove you don't need superstar quarterback to win it all

There aren't many clear takeaways from Super Bowl LX.

Yes, elite defenses still win championships. And yes, it helps to have a good kicking game. About three-quarters of the way through one of the weirder blowout victories in recent memory, Seattle Seahawks punter Michael Dickson and kicker Jason Myers had strong cases to be named co-MVPs.

Maybe there was something to all that talk about the New England Patriots benefiting from a soft schedule. It turns out that going 14-3 against a bunch of teams that missed the playoffs, fired their head coach, or are the New York Jets is not a great indicator of quality.

But there's one thing about Seattle's 29-13 victory - which honestly felt at times like it should've been 45-0 - that'll probably have front offices around the NFL stroking their collective beards in contemplation.

And that is: Maybe you don't need a superstar quarterback to win a title.

No position in any other sport has gained as much importance in recent decades as the NFL quarterback. It's become a passing league, and teams have found it nearly impossible to compete without an elite signal-caller - someone who can make every throw and diagnose defensive schemes. The dynasties of Tom Brady's Patriots and Patrick Mahomes' Kansas City Chiefs only underscored that point. The Denver Broncos, all those years after John Elway, needed Peyton Manning to get back to championship glory. The Los Angeles Rams won after landing Matthew Stafford. Sure, there have been a few counterexamples to confound the argument, most of them wearing Eagles jerseys, but Jalen Hurts has saved his best performances for Philadelphia's biggest games.

But Sam Darnold and the Seahawks? Hmmm.

It's not that Darnold played poorly Sunday night. He mostly kept the Seahawks moving in the right direction, even if he missed several throws that could have put the game out of reach much earlier. Crucially, Darnold avoided the big mistakes, taking just one sack and never turning the ball over.

That's just the thing, though. Darnold managed the game, defying the modern narrative that a "game-manager" quarterback is often supposed to spell certain doom for the team that employs him.

How many NFL executives, looking at Seattle's success, will be wondering if they should try to find the next Darnold instead of reorienting their team around the fabled highly drafted quarterback on a rookie contract? The fact that the Minnesota Vikings discarded Darnold after a 14-win season and handed the offense to an untested J.J. McCarthy ultimately cost their general manager his job and will at least give rival executives pause to reconsider their own strategies.

How many other quarterbacks over the years have followed Darnold's NFL path: taken near the top of the draft, struggled on a terrible team, then bounced around on other squads that needed a backup? How many of those players might have been reborn, just as Darnold did, if given a chance to lead something like Minnesota's high-powered offense, then Seattle's the following season? The answer is almost certainly not zero.

Could that be Zach Wilson in a couple of years? Mac Jones? Will Levis? (OK, probably not him.)

But then again, even if Darnold was far from the key player in Seattle's victory on Sunday, the Super Bowl did underline the importance of the quarterback position in another way: Drake Maye was quite high on the list of reasons why the Patriots lost.

Maye, who spent 17 weeks being spectacularly good for a 23-year-old second-year player, was almost as shockingly bad against Seattle. And although his offensive line was hopeless and perhaps his shoulder injury was worse than the Patriots admitted, Maye spent the entire first half jittery and indecisive, missing throws on the rare chances he had to make them.

Even with halftime to calm his nerves and the game very much still in the balance, Maye opened the third quarter with yet another three-and-out. Once the Seahawks added a fourth field goal to push the lead to 12, the game no longer felt in the balance.

Maye eventually made some big plays, but he canceled them out with even bigger mistakes. He took six sacks and committed three turnovers. There's every reason to believe he'll be a great player with a long career - he nearly won the MVP award this season - but his play Sunday was a reminder that the quarterback can be a sinkhole that sucks down the rest of an otherwise competent team.

New England's defense was excellent for much of the contest, particularly cornerback Christian Gonzalez. But with Maye seeing ghosts for three quarters and unable to give his defense a break, the defense eventually buckled.

It's still a quarterback league, in other words. The Seahawks just landed on a new way to find one.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.