Darnold excited to be a Panther
QB has Carolina’s confidence after tough stint in New York
When Sam Darnold came to the Jets as the No. 3 overall pick in the 2018 draft, his goal was to spend the next 20 years in New York and win a lot of Super Bowls.
That made being traded to the Carolina Panthers after just three non-playoff seasons all the more difficult to accept for the 23-year-old quarterback.
“Anytime you go somewhere and you set lofty goals and those goals aren’t met, that’s tough,” Darnold said Monday in his first interview since joining the Panthers. “When I heard the news that they wanted to trade me, it was tough. Anytime you are not wanted somewhere that is a tough pill to swallow.”
But Darnold said his feelings began to change when he met Panthers owner David Tepper and some of the team’s coaching staff and realized he could jumpstart a struggling career in which he went 13-25 as a starter in his first three seasons.
With the Jets holding the No. 2 pick in the draft, they felt it was the right time to move on at quarterback and traded Darnold for a sixth-round pick this season and second- and fourthround picks in 2022.
Panthers second-year coach Matt Rhule believes Darnold has the talent to take Carolina to the next level following a 5-11 season. The team is so confident in Darnold that they’ve already given last year’s starting QB Teddy Bridgewater an opportunity to seek a trade with another team on his own.
“We brought Sam here because we think he can play at a really high level,” Rhule said.
Darnold declined to knock the Jets on the way out the door, saying he has nothing but respect for the organization and thinks that general manager Joe Douglas and coach Robert Saleh will get the organization on the winning track soon.
Patriots: For more than a decade Julian Edelman lived the ultimate NFL underdog story, going from undersized college quarterback to a favorite option of Tom Brady on three Patriots’ Super Bowl-winning teams. He says he’ll leave the league after giving everything he had to the sport. Citing a knee injury that cut his 2020 season short after just six games, Edelman announced Monday that he is retiring from the NFL after 11 seasons. Earlier in the day, the Patriots terminated the contract of the Super Bowl 53 MVP after the receiver failed a physical.
Chiefs: Former Kansas City assistant coach Britt Reid was charged Monday with driving while intoxicated resulting in serious physical injury after a crash that left a young girl critically injured. The Jackson County prosecutor’s office said Reid’s blood alcohol content shortly after the Feb. 4 crash was 0.113, above the legal limit of .08. He was driving about 84 mph in a 65 mph zone seconds before his truck crashed into two cars stopped on an entrance ramp to Interstate 435 near Arrowhead Stadium, prosecutors said.
Browns: Cleveland appears to be closing in on Jadeveon Clowney. Clowney visited the Browns on March 24, and NFL Network reported on Monday that he’ll return to Cleveland’s headquarters Wednesday — a visit that could include a physical that may lead to a contract agreement.