Kalyn Kahler went into the Seahawks locker room Sunday night looking to add some scene-setting details to her story about Sam Darnold winning the Super Bowl. The ESPN senior NFL writer came out with a story about crashing through a folding chair, falling into Darnold’s locker, and knocking over his beer while the quarterback was mid-scrum with reporters.
Darnold was the last player to enter the locker room after beating the Patriots 29-13 in Super Bowl LX. Kahler had already finished most of her story but wanted to grab some quotes from the quarterback for additional color. The problem was she couldn’t hear anything Darnold was saying from the back of the media scrum that had formed around him, so she moved closer to his locker, looking for a better angle.
“I kneel on the folding chair, and the folding chair collapsed underneath me,” Kahler said during an appearance on 104.3 The Score. “You should never trust a folding chair, honestly, but it collapsed right away, and I went hands first into his locker because it’s like a cubby, it’s like a stall. So, I went straight into his locker, and he had a beer sitting there, and I knocked his little beer.”
It gets worse.
Darnold had clothes sitting in the locker that were about to get soaked, which meant he had to stop his interview mid-answer to deal with the spilled beer situation. The whole thing could have been embarrassing for everyone involved, but Darnold’s reaction matched everything Kahler had already heard about him from teammates and coaches while covering the team.
“He had to kind of stop what he was doing because I think his clothes were sitting there and they were gonna get beer on them,” Kahler said. “So, then he mopped up the beer. He was actually really nice about it. He was like, ‘Are you OK?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ I was like, ‘Sorry, I knocked your beer over,’ and he was like, ‘Don’t worry about it. What’s important is that you’re OK.'”
Darnold checking on Kahler before worrying about his beer or his clothes fits with the reputation he’s built throughout his NFL career. When we covered his comments about his years with the Jets and Panthers on The Dan Patrick Show ahead of the Super Bowl, Darnold talked about loving every part of his journey and being able to wake up the next day after losses and still enjoy being around his teammates. When Laura Rutledge clarified that Darnold wasn’t blowing her off during a postgame interview situation in January, she made sure to note that he was just looking for Brock Purdy to say hello to his former teammate first.
The guy who won his first Super Bowl and had every reason to be celebrating with his beer in his locker instead spent time making sure a reporter who just crashed through a chair into his stuff was alright.
“Happy to report Darnold is the nice guy we think he is and PSA to never ever trust a folding chair,” Kahler wrote on X.
That PSA is probably the most important takeaway from the whole thing. Folding chairs in crowded locker rooms after championship games are not designed to support kneeling reporters trying to get better angles on video. They’re designed to collapse immediately and send you crashing into a Super Bowl-winning quarterback’s beer.
At least Darnold was cool about it.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.