WHAM! BAM! THANK YOU, SAM!
DETROIT — When Jets 48, Lions 17 was over, Sam Darnold walked out of the visiting locker room into the arms of his beaming mother and father. “Very proud,” Mike Darnold said. It was deafening inside Ford Field as Sam Darnold began bootlegging to his right, then throwing all the way across the field to his left. And you worried that the roof might blow off when safety Quandre Diggs returned a pick-six 37 yards.
So it took exactly one play — one humbling, horrific pass — for Sam Darnold to realize that he wasn’t quarterbacking San Clemente High School against Dana Hills anymore, he wasn’t quarterbacking USC against UCLA anymore. This was no longer preseason.
Mike Darnold, father of the rookie quarterback, was asked what he was thinking right then and there.
“We’re just really happy that things ended this way,” the father said. “He’s good at speaking for himself.”
You truly learn about a young quarterback when he gets punched in the gut, when he is knocked to the ground physically or emotionally or spiritually or all of the above.
Josh McCown, who has seen just about everything, sidled up to Darnold on the JJets sideline and might have said: “Hey, Brett Favre threw a pick-six on his first pass, too. Jameis Winston, too!” No matter. Because Darnold didn’t blink. Because Darnold never blinks.
“On that interception, I was pretty nervous,” Darnold said. “Oh shoot,” he remembers thinking as disaster struck.
Then he retreated to the sideline and his teammates noticed him smiling. “Can’t get much worse, unless I throw another one, which I knew that I wasn’t gonna do.”
He wanted this job, he wanted to be the quarterback of the Jets and all that goes with it — the 50 years without a championship and the buttfumble. He wanted this stage, he wanted this moment, when his NFL dream would begin and long-suffering Jets fans would look longingly at him as the Boy Who Would Be Namath. After all the Boys Who Were Not Namath.
Bloody but unbowed, his team responded to him, rallied around him almost immediately. And every step of the way, on special teams (Andre Roberts’ many happy punt returns) and on defense (four interceptions of a frazzled Matthew Stafford, two by Darron Lee, one a pick-six, a fifth interception in garbage time by Jamal Adams off Matt Cassel).
“I really believed it galvanized our group,” McCown said. “It really kind of brought us together. It was kind of like a rallying cry ... show people we have each other’s back.’ ”
Sam Darnold (16-21, 198 yards, two TDs, one INT) was born for this. Sam Starnold.
It was right after the two-minute warning when Darnold, armed with uncommon poise and resilience, sent a shudder through the hushed Lions den.
It was already Jets 10, Lions 7, when Darnold faced a third-and-2 at the Detroit 41. He scanned the field and noticed Robby Anderson streaking free down the left sideline. Lions safety Tavon Wilson tried to chase Anderson down. Darnold let it fly.
“I knew that I could give Robby a shot up, too, and just put it out there for him,” Darnold said.
It shouldn’t have reminded anyone of Joe Namath-to-Don Maynard. But Anderson wanted that ball, and he wasn’t going to let Wilson wrestle it away from him.
And Darnold had his first NFL touchdown. He was congratulated some of his offensive linemen. He trotted to the end zone to share the joy with Anderson. It was Jets 17, Lions 7.
It was early in the third quarter when Dar-
nold, on the run to his right, hit wide open Quincy Enunwa in the left flat for his second TD, a 21-yarder that made it Jets 24, Lions 17.
A 75-year-old Hall of Fame Jets quarterback was watching excitedly from his Florida home as the youngest starting quarterback in the franchise’s history, the 21-year-old wunderkind whose parents were in the house, was about to take his first baby steps up the heretofore unscalable Mount Namath.
“Barring any kind of misfortune,” Joe Namath told The Post before the game, “he should be around a long time playing a high grade of football at quarterback.”
One day, perhaps, you might see Sam Darnold unveiling a Fu Manchu. One day, perhaps, he might decide to play in white shoes. One day, perhaps, he might leave the Florham Park, N.J., cocoon for a bachelor pad in Manhattan.
Maybe Sam Darnold won’t turn out to be the Second Coming of Joe Namath. The First Coming of Sam Darnold is good enough for now.
Samazing start.