Sam Darnold: ‘Everyone wants to be No. 1’

They have been polite, saying the right things and flashing their biggest smiles.

But let’s face it. The quarterbacks in this year’s NFL Draft all want the same thing: to be the top overall pick. All the politeness in the world won’t change that.

‘It’s pretty natural for us, especially quarterbacks, to be very competitive’

“There’s a lot of competition going around,” former USC standout Sam Darnold told Bruce Murray and Phil Savage on the SiriusXM Blitz Wednesday at a pre-draft youth event outside of AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. “It’s pretty natural for us, especially quarterbacks, to be very competitive. We’re very competitive people. And everyone — I mean ever since Pop Warner into high school, college — everyone wants to be No. 1. There’s just something about it. But, again, wherever I end up, that’s the place for me.

“Yeah, we’re competitors. Naturally, everyone’s a competitor. So it’s been really fun throughout this whole process, being with them, competing with them. And we talked about it a little bit (Tuesday) night, just wherever we end up is the place for us. And that’s going to be the right place.”

‘We can’t allow (the criticism) to get in our heads or anything’

Wyoming’s Josh Allen and UCLA’s Josh Rosen were at the event. Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield, also considered of the draft’s top four quarterbacks, is not attending the draft.

Darnold is happy to be within 24 hours of likely knowing where he’ll be playing in 2018. Finally, all of the seemingly endless media scrutiny will stop … or at least be put on hold.

‘We’ve just got to do what we do’

“The criticism is what it is, especially with the media and everything that’s going on around us,” Darnold said. “We can’t give into it. We can’t allow it to get in our heads or anything. We’ve just got to do what we do, because at the end of the day, we’re going to end up where we end up.”