CHARLOTTE — The Super Bowl's coming down to a pair of quarterbacks who have worn the black and blue.

With Seattle's Sam Darnold and New England's Drake Maye teeing it up in two weeks for the championship, one of the two quarterbacks with deep ties to this team will be lifting the Lombardi Trophy, in the stadium where the Panthers made their last Super Bowl appearance (which one of them attended).

Darnold, of course, played for the Panthers for two seasons (2021-22) before leaving on a free-agent sojourn that would take him from San Francisco to Minnesota to Seattle. The Panthers acquired Darnold from the Jets in April of 2021, and his time here started off well.

The Panthers started 3-0 that season, and Darnold led the league in rushing touchdowns for a time. But when Christian McCaffrey was injured in Week 3, things began to deteriorate quickly, including a series of injuries, and the Panthers traded for quarterback Baker Mayfield prior to the start of training camp in 2022. But when Mayfield was injured and later asked for his release, Darnold returned to the lineup and nearly got the Panthers to the playoffs in 2022 under interim coach Steve Wilks, in another unlikely playoff plush.

Then the Panthers traded for the right to the No. 1 overall pick in 2023 and Bryce Young, and Darnold hit free agency.

After a gap year backing up in San Francisco, Darnold went to Minnesota last year and threw for 4,319 yards and 35 touchdowns, before going to Seattle and flourishing there. And as Panthers long snapper JJ Jansen noted, being in systems with similar roots (the Seattle system of offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak is a direct correlation to Kyle Shanahan's San Francisco offense, since those two families have so much shared background. And that's helped Darnold find a comfort zone.

"Not only was he a great leader and teammate here, but he played really good football," Jansen said of Darnold, and he's seen all the quarterbacks here since Jake Delhomme to Cam Newton and beyond. "His two years here, where he had a couple of injuries, there was a lot of turnover, coaches fired, there was a lot going on. Which wasn't all that different when he was in New York.

"He's big, he's strong, he's athletic. He's a great student of the game. And, so when he went to San Francisco, goes to Minnesota, now in Seattle, he's been around good coaching, guys that are really building him up, good systems for what he's good at."

The Vikings won 14 games with Darnold under center last year, and the Seahawks matched that. In the last two seasons, he's completed 67 percent of his passes for 8,367 yards, 60 touchdowns, and 26 interceptions. The teammates who were here with him before knew it was something he was capable of.

"I knew he would," veteran offensive lineman Austin Corbett said. "I loved when Sam was here; he was awesome. He's a great guy, you saw him have great success in Minnesota too, so ask those guys too."

Corbett has a special appreciation because he, too, had to move around to find his place. Drafted by the Browns, he was traded to the Rams and won a Super Bowl ring. So he's learned that situations matter, which applies to this place, too. And the parallels with the low-key personalities of his former and current quarterbacks aren't lost on him either.

"I think I'm a big testament to that too, just a fresh start can do wonders for a career," Corbett said. "You know, getting out of Cleveland and going to LA helped me out, and I think it's just part of the journey in the league. Like, it's not always going to stick the first time you try something, and this league is such an immediate-answer type of thing. It's like I'm just playing football at a different level. Things are developing at different rates, and sorry, it doesn't please everybody the same way."

The Patriots have likewise built around Maye, the third overall pick in the 2024 draft.

But before the North Carolina product was a NFL quarterback, he was a huge Panthers fan, and attended Super Bowl 50 as a fan to watch his favorite team, before he'd go on to star at Myers Park High.

"It's full circle," Maye told reporters Sunday night. "My dad, when I was maybe in seventh grade, said if the Panthers made it we were going to go. It was heartbreaking, they lost to the Broncos. But no, it was a good experience for a kid my age who loved football, loved quarterbacks. That was Peyton [Manning]'s last game. What a [Pro Football] Hall of Fame career he's had. Pretty cool to be full circle, going back here 10 years later, and I think it's just a special moment for this whole team, and we're just going to enjoy it tonight and head back."

With that sense of history, Maye approached Jansen after a preseason game in his rookie year.

"He sought me out, of course, I certainly know who he is as being a third overall draft choice and being at Myers Park," Jansen said. "I remember watching him play at Myers Park when (former teammate) Josh McCown was the OC there and his son was the backup. And then watching Drake play and certainly watching Drake's brother play basketball at Chapel Hill, so I had kept tabs on his career. But I didn't think to introduce myself, and he came up to me afterwards, just a very mature young man, and said something very similar about watching me grow up or he was watching me play as he was growing up, and it was cool."