NFL quarterbacks don’t often deal with hip injuries.
That, though, is what Sam Darnold sustained on Wednesday night in the NFL’s season-opening game between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots.
Darnold was eventually ruled out for the game with the injury, forcing Seattle to rely on backup QB Drew Lock.
There aren’t a ton of prior examples of this, but maybe the most obvious is Tua Tagovailoa, who hurt his hip both at Alabama and again with the Miami Dolphins.
Tua Tagovailoa Hip Injuries
Tagovailoa actually hurt his hip in the worst way when he played for the Crimson Tide.
While at Alabama, Tagovailoa had a fractured and dislocated right hip with a posterior wall fracture.
At the time, it wasn’t even a sure thing Tua would be able to play football again.
Obviously, he ended up as a top-10 NFL Draft pick, so it didn’t end up hindering him as the worst fear, but at the time it was quite scary.
Tagovailoa then hurt his hip in the NFL during the 2024 season with the Dolphins. It had to do with a muscular injury relating to the hip, and it forced Tagovailoa to miss two games due to limited mobility because of the ailment.
It’s also worth noting that Tua hasn’t necessarily been his best self in a few seasons. He certainly didn’t return to form in 2025 after the hip problem at the end of 2024.
Those things don’t have to be connected, but it’s certainly not an ideal injury for a quarterback to deal with.
Other NFL QB Hip Injuries
Darnold doesn’t have many other places to look.
In 2024, Anthony Richardson of the Colts was removed from the game with a hip pointer injury and has to miss the remainder of the contest, but he didn’t miss a start due to that moving forward.
Mitchell Trubisky was with the Bears in 2019 when he also had a hip pointer. He too had to be pulled from the game.
These two guys seem to suggest that the hope for the Seahawks’ fanbase should be that Darnold sustained a hip pointer injury and not anything worse. That would add up with the fact that he didn’t seem to feel it much at first but soon seemed to be more hampered by it as he moved around the sideline.
Tagovailoa has seen the worse side of multiple hip injuries, though, and he and Darnold had some overlap in the AFC East days. The Seahawks will be hoping that nothing about Tua’s hip injury struggles rubbed off to Darnold.
Tua Tagovailoa’s Hip Injury History With Dolphins Matters For Sam Darnold