The Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots will face off in Super Bowl LX after both teams failed to reach the playoffs a season ago. Their paths, however, were quite different, with the Pats having one of the easiest regular-season schedules in recent memory and the Hawks going through what ended up a gauntlet of an NFC West division.

The physical toll of having to play the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams three times each seems to have taken its toll on Seattle. Darnold has been dealing with an oblique injury throughout the playoffs, and it’s been something the Seahawks are still monitoring.

For his part, Darnold says that he feels good.

“It feels really good,” he said on Wednesday morning, according to ESPN. “Definitely the time off has helped a little bit. I’m always just going to take it one step at a time, do my rehab and do everything I need to do to make sure it feels great going into practice and going into the game … on Sunday.”

Head coach Mike Macdonald corroborated Darnold’s assessment in his update, saying, “He’s in a great spot. I know he’s really confident.”

“Sam’s right on schedule,” he said. “So we’ve had this plan here over the last X amount of weeks, and it varies every day. And today he had a great day, so we’re right on schedule.”

Darnold not the only concern

As big a deal as Darnold’s health is, he’s not the only Seahawks player dealing with health issues leading up to the Super Bowl. Rookie Safety Nick Emmanwori, a standout for Seattle’s highly rated defense, injured his ankle while defending a pass in Wednesday’s practice.

“He had an ankle today, we brought him in to look at it, and we’ll kind of go from here and figure out what are the next steps,” Macdonald said of Emmanwori.

It’ll be interesting to see how healthy the Seahawks can get before kick-off on Sunday.