Steve Brownlee

Every year when I write this Armchair Quarterback column leading into the Super Bowl, I focus on the prop — short for “proposition” — bets that are out there.

They’re sometimes common, sometimes quite unusual circumstances that don’t directly affect the outcome of the game.

The ones that have most gotten my attention are the crazy ones, maybe the strangest being in 2024 with the 100,000-to-1 bet that there would be an alien invasion of Earth AND the Super Bowl would end in a tie.

But I’ve kind of gotten disgusted with how some athletes are being compromised with these “props,” for instance guys letting bettors know they wouldn’t be playing much in a certain game so they the pro bettors could place money on the under about how many points they’d score that night.

Yech.

So I came up with something for this year’s Super Bowl column that I like better — looking at quarterbacks in the league.

I started thinking about it with Seattle’s Sam Darnold going to the Super Bowl while being on his fifth team in eight years in the NFL.

Also getting my attention was the Packers’ hiring of Jonathan Gannon as defensive coordinator on Monday, since he had to deal with the headaches of his big-contract QB Kyler Murray that probably helped get him fired there as head coach.

And don’t even get me started on the Jets’ situation right after Northern Michigan University graduate Robert Saleh was hired as head coach and that team took on a creaky Aaron Rodgers as its signal caller.

So let’s start with the QBs in Sunday’s Super Bowl.

The story of New England’s Drake Maye is pretty straightforward — he was drafted by the Patriots less than two years ago and would become the youngest QB to win a Super Bowl at age 23.

Technically, he’d be second youngest after I found Mike Tomczak was a younger 23 — about three months past turning that age — when his Chicago Bears won the 1986 Super Bowl.

The only thing? Tomczak was 0 for 0 passing in that Super Bowl as he didn’t play. But he was on the roster.

So the youngest to actually play was Ben Roethlisberger, who was about a month shy of 24 when he won the big game in 2006 for the Steelers. Maye has about seven months to go before his 24th birthday in August.

Maye is already the second youngest — only missing youngest by about a month — to start a Super Bowl, that honor going to Dan Marino with the Dolphins as a rookie in 1984. Of course, he didn’t win in his only appearance in the big game.

Then there’s Darnold, which when I first saw his name years ago, I thought was supposed to be spelled D’Arnold, like some of those New York Mets baseball players with — I think — Italian names with the “Dee-apostrophe” to start their surnames.

So D’Arnold — oh! excuse me, Darnold — had a horrid 13-25 record with the Jets after being the No. 3 overall pick in the 2018 draft.

Considering what we all know about the Jets, he should have been put in that team’s Ring of Honor for actually getting double-digit wins there.

Apparently with the other 31 NFL teams thinking you can actually win with the Jets if your QB is good enough, he didn’t get another full-time starting job until he got to the Vikings last season. And that wasn’t even supposed to happen, considering J.J. McCarthy was going to work his way fairly quickly into the starter’s spot before his 2024 season was ended by injury in the preseason.

In the time between his stints with the Jets and Minnesota, Darnold ended up first in Carolina with several injury-plagued seasons. The Panthers aren’t exactly the model of excellence, considering they not only let him go, but Baker Mayfield too, in 2022.

The Mayfield release came earlier during that season and got Darnold a bunch of starts so that he could finish his second season in Carolina by winning four of its final six games and just missing the playoffs.

Then he was off to the 49ers, where he didn’t really play, but apparently soaked up a lot of experience behind starting QB Brock Purdy, but probably most likely from the coaching staff headed up by Kyle Shanahan.

A single year there sent him off better as a QB to Minnesota, where he went 14-3 in the regular season in 2024. But the third loss was to the Detroit Lions in the final game that sent them from a No. 1 seed in the NFC to a wild card spot.

Darnold and the Vikings also lost their lone playoff game, making them balk at offering him something like a $40 million-a-year contract.

He left as a free agent, signing a $33.5 million-for-three years deal with Seattle, and the rest is, if not already history, then is becoming history.

How about the Cardinals’ Murray? Remember when Arizona balked at signing him to a mega-deal a couple years ago, only willing to do so with a clause saying he had to study game film at least four hours per week?

If you’ve ever watched him play — looking like an NBA point guard making creative plays all over the field — it got me thinking he doesn’t LIKE to study things to death, instead letting his creativity bubble to the top.

Problem is, when he’s half the size of the defenders chasing him — he really looks like that during games — creativity will eventually get you killed, I’m hoping only figuratively.

It probably worked great in college where he was faster than 95% of the rushing defenders and able to outwit nearly all of them.

NFL coaches are paid to put together a defense to outwit any and all pro QBs, though.

Then we have the Lions’ Jared Goff, who was a throw-in to the Matthew Stafford trade to the L.A. Rams just before Dan Campbell became Detroit’s head coach. Goff was slung off by the Rams despite quarterbacking them to a Super Bowl title, and I certainly saw why his first year.

The key for him, though, is having a sturdy offensive line as he’s not the most mobile, but can make all kinds of pinpoint passes — kind of like Tom Brady or Dan Marino, eh?

Get him good support and he’ll complete — what? — 18 of 18 passes like he did in a game a couple seasons ago.

I could go on and on and on … but let’s stop here and take a lot at Sunday night’s big game:

• Super Bowl LX (60), AFC No. 2 seed New England (17-3) vs. NFC No. 1 Seattle (16-3), 6:30 p.m. Sunday; TV: NBC — I see a little weakness in our two QBs for this game, Darnold and Maye, if they’re having to be called on to throw a ton of times against each other’s vaunted defenses.

That’s especially true for Maye, just in his second year, possibly having a shoulder injury and facing what is a slightly better “D” than his own.

Even Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel says the Seahawks run relentlessly, leading the league in rushing attempts by its offense. Kenneth Walker III leads that part of Seattle’s game with 259 rushes for 1,205 yards over all 19 games.

But New England has the league’s No. 4 run defense this season, though it was a lot better in the first half of the regular season, ballooning from allowing 79 yards a game in the first 10 games up to 134 yards a contest in the last seven.

Then the Pats found their run “D” again in the playoffs, giving up 87, 48 and 79 yards to its three opponents, the Chargers, Texans and Broncos.

One cautionary tale here — those are three teams much more gifted with their defenses than their offenses.

Seattle has the No. 3 rushing defense in all games, while the Pats are No. 6 in rushing offense in the regular season, No. 4 in the playoff games on a per-game basis.

Seattle was No. 6 in playoff offense rushing.

So from what I can gather, while New England’s defensive numbers may look better in the playoffs, isn’t that because they played three really offensively-challenged teams?

All on this basis, I’ll have to pick the favorite in this game, Seahawks, 24-19.

Two weeks ago — 1-1, 50 percent. Playoffs — 8-4, 67 percent.

Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.