Sam Darnold was shaped by a memory. Panthers about to find out ‘how special he truly is’
Mel Pasquale knows Sam Darnold in a way few — if any — in Charlotte do.
“We love Sam!” he wrote in a text, elated to discuss the new Carolina Panthers quarterback.
For Pasquale, the call is another opportunity to talk about his favorite NFL player, Darnold, who he watched grow up in California from age 5 to the starting quarterback of the Panthers.
Pasquale’s youngest son, Nick, and Sam played together on the San Clemente High School football team for a year, where Mel was an assistant coach. Sam, who was three years younger, looked up to Nick.
Darnold was asked after a recent practice what was the hardest thing he has ever had to overcome. It wasn’t his struggles with the New York Jets. It was eight years ago when Nick died.
In every game Darnold has played since his days at Southern Cal, he’s worn the same red wristband on his left arm, which reads “Nick Pasquale.” And on Sunday, when the Panthers play the Jets in the season opener at Bank of America Stadium — Darnold’s first against his former team — he’ll be wearing that red wristband.
For Mel Pasquale, the pain of losing a child never goes away. But Darnold’s gesture and seeing it on national television gives him some happiness.
Pasquale has watched all of Darnold’s games since the quarterback’s rookie year with New York. And despite Darnold’s track record in 2020, throwing more interceptions than touchdowns, and that the Jets wanted to move on from him after only three seasons, Pasquale thinks a change of scenery will be good for Darnold.
“Watch. When he starts winning, Carolina Panthers fans are going to be very, very happy with what’s about to happen,” Pasquale says in an accent fitting of a Californian surfer.
Pasquale is part of the reason Darnold is confident he can still be successful in the NFL and revitalize his young career. He has seen others accomplish more with far worse circumstances than he’s had. And he doesn’t view Sunday’s game as a revenge game because he doesn’t feel it was the Jets’ fault he failed there.
“Everyone has a job to do and, unfortunately, I didn’t do a good enough job of putting our team in the end zone and putting us in a position to win games,” Darnold told The Observer. “I’m responsible for that.
“That doesn’t mean I lose confidence as a player. I still believe in myself. I still think I can do those things. I just get another opportunity to do it somewhere else.”
‘A normal guy’
Christian McCaffrey is puzzled.
He’s being peppered with questions from reporters about Darnold and is having trouble finding the words to describe a guy he has known for years.
“He’s an easy, but hard guy to describe,” McCaffrey said, as his eyes look toward the sky and he tilts his head back, still thinking.
A few moments go by and McCaffrey finally lands on something.
“(Darnold’s) just a normal guy,” he said.
Darnold grins when he’s told of McCaffrey’s description. He says he’s never thought of it. But when he thinks back on it, he realizes that maybe it is true.
“I actually just bought a truck,” Darnold said. “A little (Ford) F-150. It looks very normal. Normal rims, not lifted or anything. A bunch of my teammates give me sh** for it.”
When Darnold came to Charlotte and moved into his new home, he told media members he was sleeping on his mattress with no bed frame and half a sectional sofa. The rest of his furniture hadn’t arrived yet.
And ask anyone who knows Darnold from his college days and his childhood in San Clemente, Calif., they’ll say the same. There’s no flash to Sam. No jewelry. No fancy car. What you see is what you get.
When he committed to Southern California in 2014, he didn’t make a big announcement. He didn’t have a press conference or make a video presentation on Twitter. He just sent a text to the then-USC coach Steve Sarkisian.
In college, Darnold would show up to classes, parties, meetings and any other function in the same outfit.
“Dude was always wearing sandals and a surfer T,” said Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Michael Pittman, who played two years with Darnold at USC. “He always looks like he’s ready to go to the beach.”
His current and former teammates refer to him as a “Cali boy,” for his carefree demeanor. Offensive coordinator Joe Brady sees that personality trait as a benefit because he doesn’t let his emotions affect his game.
In three years at New York, Darnold had a 13-25 record, with 45 touchdown passes and 39 interceptions. He had his worst year statistically in 2020 when he threw nine touchdowns and 11 interceptions in 12 games.
The Jets went 2-10. They finished tied for the worst record in football at 2-14, which locked them up for the second pick in the 2021 draft. When word spread that the Jets were thinking about taking quarterback Zach Wilson of BYU second overall, and they were open to trading Darnold, the Panthers were interested, coach Matt Rhule told The Observer.
“It was pretty quickly that we felt this was a smart move,” Rhule said. “We could keep the eighth pick in the draft, get a really good young quarterback here and build for the future.”
The Teddy Bridgewater signing the previous offseason hadn’t worked out for the Panthers. And though Darnold hadn’t lived up to the expectations the Jets had of him when they drafted him third overall in 2018, the Panthers saw a 23-year-old quarterback with a strong arm, athleticism and potential.
“Regardless of the record, he was staying in the pocket, he was getting hit, he was getting back up,” Brady said. “You know he’s a tough guy.”
A competitive family
San Clemente is a small beach town of about 64,000 people in south Orange County, where the average temperatures get no higher than 78 degrees and no lower than 67. There’s only one public high school, everyone knows everyone and the football stars the town produces are local legends.
Similar to small towns in Texas and Alabama, the city shuts down on Friday nights to watch the San Clemente Tritons.
Darnold grew up in a blue-collar household with his mom, a middle school P.E. teacher, his father, a plumber, and his older sister. They were all competitive. Chris, his mom, played volleyball in college at Long Beach City College before a knee injury cut her career short. His older sister, Franki, played volleyball at Rhode Island. And his father, Mike, played football at the University of Redlands, a Division III school.
His grandfather, who passed away when Sam was 3, was a United States Olympic athlete in volleyball. He played in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He also played basketball at Southern Cal.
Competition was all Darnold knew.
When he was 5, he dominated the other children his age in every sport and became a local phenom. He had a tough time playing soccer because he was so dominant — so much so, that his coaches would ask him not to score any more goals. Darnold didn’t understand it. He wanted to win.
“His skill level was so vastly different than the other kids he was around,” said Jaime Ortiz, Darnold’s high school football coach. “Other kids were trying to figure out what end was what, and he’s out there dribbling the ball and catching the ball and throwing the ball.”
Darnold’s success continued through high school. He was a star in basketball and football, winning league MVP in both sports. When he suffered a broken foot early in his 11th-grade year, the most crucial year for recruiting, his coaches created a highlight film of his best basketball plays to showcase his athleticism.
“Being that point guard and making those plays on the basketball court, making those quick pass decisions helps him till today,” Ortiz said.
Nick’s death
It was a Friday night in September 2013 during Darnold’s 11th-grade year, and he was the starting quarterback of San Clemente’s football team. In the fourth quarter of a tight game, Darnold ran an 80-yard quarterback draw to lead his team on a game-winning touchdown drive.
Nick Pasquale, his former teammate, approached Darnold afterward.
Pasquale, then a walk-on at UCLA, was undersized at 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds. But he was successful at nearly everything he did because he worked harder than everyone, his father Mel said.
Ortiz said he was the “heart and soul” of the high school football team when he played there.
And other kids, including Darnold, respected him.
“He told me, ‘Hey man, you’re going to be a really good player one day. I can’t wait to see you at the next level,’ ” Darnold recalled.
Darnold will always remember that moment.
Two days later, Pasquale was walking home from a party at 1:27 a.m. on Sept. 8, 2013, in a residential neighborhood in San Clemente, when he was struck by a car, the LA Daily News reported. He died later that morning. The driver was neither cited nor charged with a crime for hitting Pasquale.
Mel Pasquale doesn’t like to talk about what happened that night. At this point, it doesn’t matter, he says.
Nick’s death was felt throughout the community. There were cars double-parked around the family’s house to express condolences.
Darnold’s car was one of them.
“To see someone like his dad lose someone like that and want to still coach us, taught me about resilience and how if you lose someone, or something tragic happens in your life, you can always bounce back from it,” Darnold said.
Wanting him to succeed
Mel Pasquale has said the same prayer every day for the past eight years.
He prays to God that he takes away the pain he feels from losing his son. While Mel says he’s gotten better and has learned to celebrate Nick’s life more than sulk, the pain remains.
“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about Nick,” he said.
On Sept. 8, Wednesday, Pasquale, his wife, his eldest son, A.J., and a few of Nick’s friends went out for what has become a tradition for the Pasquale family in celebrating Nick’s life.
Nick’s favorite food was clams. Each year on the anniversary of his death, they go to a local restaurant in San Clemente called Fisherman’s Restaurant and Bar to eat clams and share stories about Nick.
Today, Pasquale said they’ll gather at his house or at another restaurant to watch Sam play against the Jets.
And Pasquale will do as he’s always done the past seven years. He’ll look to the TV for Sam’s red wristband with his son’s name on it.
“Everybody wants him to succeed. And I feel like this change of address for him, and this new uniform, new look, and the weapons he has around him, I think the world is going to find out how special he truly is,” Pasquale said of Darnold.
He already knows.
This story was originally published September 12, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
