February 7, 2026, 6:00 a.m. EST / Updated February 7, 2026 at 7:38 AM EST
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About a decade ago, the last time the Seahawks and Patriots played in the Super Bowl, Michael Gervais stood on Seattle’s sideline as the final moments unfolded: the Seahawks marching down the field, Malcolm Butler’s shocking interception, Seattle stood speechless as New England celebrated.
Gervais is neither a player nor a coach. He is a performance psychologist. After this game, he played an important role: helping the Seahawks overcome this heartbreaking loss. Gervais had been hired a few years earlier by then-Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, who believed in developing players mentally, not just physically, at a time when sports psychology was not as prevalent.
“He made it part of the water we drank,” Gervais told NBC News. “It was part of the air we breathed. It was ingrained in the culture.”
This season, the Seahawks culture had a new project: the buyout of quarterback Sam Darnold.
Once a draft pick, Darnold had been passed over by a number of teams. During those years, he had gone looking for a better coach, rebuilt his confidence and eventually landed with the Seahawks, a team that prioritized the mental part of the game.
Darnold has played so well this year that he led Seattle to the Super Bowl, where the Seahawks will face — guess who — the New England Patriots on Sunday. On the biggest stage imaginable, Darnold will have the opportunity to exorcise Seattle’s demons and complete his own journey from reject to champion.
“He understands how much his team believes in him and supports him,” Seattle coach Mike Macdonald, Carroll’s successor, said at a news conference this week. “So keep shooting, man, keep being you.”
Darnold has always had the pedigree of a Super Bowl quarterback. Growing up in San Clemente, California, he was rated as a top high school recruit and started at USC for two years, becoming a hero after scoring a comeback victory against Penn State in the 2017 Rose Bowl. He had a big arm and showed athleticism. Pundits applauded when the Jets selected him third overall in the 2018 draft.
But during his first five seasons, Darnold found himself stuck on dysfunctional teams – first the New York Jets and later the Carolina Panthers. During that span, the Jets and Panthers brought in four head coaches and five offensive coordinators, including interim coaches replacing those fired midseason. On those teams, Darnold threw almost as many interceptions as touchdowns.
He experienced two low points in 2019, his second year in the league.
In September of that year, the Jets faced the Cleveland Browns on “Monday Night Football.” Darnold had just been diagnosed with mononucleosis, a disease sometimes described as the “kissing disease,” and was recovering at home.
During the broadcast, ESPN displayed a graphic showing Darnold looking serious and pointing at the viewer in the type of pose seen on old Uncle Sam posters. Next to him were the words: “MONONUCLEOSIS OUT INDEFINITELY.” Immediately, the news went viral on social media.
“He was made fun of on the Internet for a couple of weeks,” Jordan Palmer, Darnold’s longtime personal quarterback trainer, told NBC News. “He just had to sit at home. Things weren’t going well. Now everyone can make fun of you.”
Later that season, the Jets played “Monday Night Football” again, this time against the Patriots — and Darnold experienced one of the worst games of his life. He turned the ball over five times and the Jets lost 33-0. He also wore a microphone for the TV show. At one point, ESPN caught him talking on the bench during a vulnerable moment.
“Seeing ghosts,” he said.
This also went viral. People made more jokes. It was proof that the Patriots had rattled Darnold to the point where he didn’t seem to know what he was doing. “Seeing ghosts,” Palmer explained, is actually a common phrase among coaches.
“Just eyes everywhere,” Palmer said. “Looks like there are more than 11 [defenders] over there. Sometimes it’s because the quarterback has no idea what he’s doing, and sometimes it’s because the quarterback could have been better prepared for that situation. And I’m not commenting on which one it was.
In 2023, Darnold became a free agent for the first time. He turned down “much better opportunities,” Palmer said, to sign with the San Francisco 49ers, to spend a season backing up Brock Purdy and to be coached by Kyle Shanahan, one of the NFL’s premier offensive minds.
Palmer compared it to a businessman who goes back to school to complete an executive education program. “They go back to get a different perspective, maybe a different way of thinking about the same problem that they always see,” he said. “It was a year of just resetting. Go to practice where you’re not preparing for the game, you’re just getting better.”
Brandon Allen, Sam Darnold and Brock Purdy before a game against the Washington Commanders on December 31, 2023. Michael Zagaris/Getty ImagesThat season, the 49ers averaged about 29 points per game, the third-highest total in the NFL. They took that offense to the Super Bowl, where Purdy faced Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. San Francisco ended up losing 25-22. But soon after, Darnold and Palmer met to debrief. Darnold had watched Purdy closely, how he approached the playoffs and his preparation.
“Nothing changes in his routine,” Palmer said of Purdy. “Nothing changed in his process. Big things happening in the world? He had no idea. He wasn’t paying attention. … It just had to be consistent throughout the Super Bowl.”
After this gap year, Darnold decided to sign with the Minnesota Vikings, a team coached by Kevin O’Connell, who himself had played quarterback in the NFL. O’Connell designs plays with pre-snap changes and moves that are supposed to help the quarterback understand what the defense is doing and give them “answers,” as Palmer puts it.
“Why did he help him?” » said Palmer. “The answer is kind of everything.”
Additionally, Minnesota’s quarterback coach was Josh McCown, Darnold’s former teammate with the Jets, with whom he had a good relationship. McCown helped Darnold “between the ears,” Palmer said. “Manage the game, manage your emotions.”
Darnold broke out this season – in his seventh year in the league. He threw for over 4,000 yards, 35 touchdowns and just 12 interceptions – and led Minnesota to 14 wins. Up until that point, he had only recorded 21 career victories. Cinderella Returns was almost over, but Darnold imploded in his playoff debut. He took nine sacks, had two turnovers and lost 27-9 to the Los Angeles Rams. One might have wondered if he “still saw ghosts.”
Kevin O’Connell celebrates with Sam Darnold after a fourth quarter touchdown against the Arizona Cardinals at US Bank Stadium on December 1, 2024 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Stephen Maturen/Getty ImagesIn March 2025, the Vikings let Darnold go and he signed with Seattle.
That same offseason, John Schneider, Seattle’s general manager, made another big decision. He asks Gervais, the performance psychologist, to come back. Gervais had worked for Seattle for about a decade during the Carroll era and left during the pandemic. (He had also worked for a number of other professional teams and athletes.) Now Schneider wanted Gervais to help Macdonald, Seattle’s new coach, build his own culture.
This culture can be defined by two words: “chasing the limits,” Gervais said, “which means running every day to the limit of your abilities to expand what you are capable of doing.”
In an interview with NBC News, Gervais spoke cautiously. He described himself as an “organizational resource” and said he could not go into detail to avoid revealing “competitive secrets.” He said he taught Seattle coaches some techniques to pass on to players — breathing exercises, meditation and visualization, as well as something he called “self-talk training.”
“Self-talk is the root of creating trust,” Gervais explained. “It’s also how we let go of mistakes. It’s what we tell ourselves that has a material impact on our performance status. The organization has invested in being great and disciplined with self-talk.”
Gervais would not say which players use which exercises. But he said Darnold “designs his life to explore what he is capable of doing. That’s how you create mental toughness – it’s day in and day out that you get to your edge. In the edge of disorder, that’s where you learn to talk to yourself, to support yourself, to let go of mistakes, to stay psychologically agile toward the shared mission.”
Considering all of these tools, Darnold completed a career-high 67.7 percent of his passes this season and threw for another 4,000 yards. He also led the Seahawks to 14 wins and the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. (Without him, the Vikings turned to a young quarterback, JJ McCarthy, and their season unraveled in short order.)
This week, as he prepared for the Super Bowl, Darnold reflected on his journey. He said he learned to forgive himself for a bad patch, a bad game, to move on and not be so hard on himself.
“You’re never going to have a perfect day out there,” Darnold said, “and once you understand that, really understand that, then you can go out there and just play freely. It really unlocked something for me mentally, and it allowed me to play good football and be OK with the things that are going on out there.”
In the NFC Championship Game, Darnold had a personal rematch with the Rams, who had knocked him out of the playoffs the previous year. He was facing quarterback Matthew Stafford, who won the league’s MVP award on Thursday — and Darnold outplayed him. He threw for 346 yards and three touchdowns with no turnovers as the Seahawks won 31-27.
All Darnold needed, after all these years in NFL purgatory, was a team with a healthy culture. This team is now reaping the rewards of all the lessons learned along the way.
“Sam is a leader, a caretaker and a massive contributor to the success of [our] culture,” Gervais said.
Tim Rohan is a sports editor and writer for NBC News.