Tag: Geno Smith seahawks

Seattle Seahawks’ most underrated player: QB Geno Smith

Is Geno Smith still underrated after all these years? Public opinion vs. Smith’s actual game tape would indicate that he is.

Whether you think Geno Smith is underrated or not depends largely on whether you think he’s hit his ceiling, and there’s nowhere to go but down. Last season, Smith’s second straight in which he made the Pro Bowl, he threw just 20 touchdown passes with nine interceptions, one year after he threw 30 touchdown passes to 11 picks, and led the league in completion percentage.

So, maybe Smith is on the downslide… but I don’t tend to think so, and the reason is new offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, who led Michael Penix Jr. and the Washington Huskies to the College Football Playoff National Championship.

Grubb’s passing game is a lot about vertical shots out of dropback play-action, and that should fit Smith to a T. Smith’s deep passes weren’t quite as resonant in 2023 as they were in 2022, when he led the league with 15 touchdowns on passes of 20 or more air yards, but let’s not put a capper on Smith’s career just yet. He may still have more in the tank to take the Seahawks through the first parts of their transitions in the post-Pete Carroll era. \

What to expect from Geno Smith in 2023 after late-stage breakout season

A breakout season at age 31 has gamers doubting whether Smith is for real in 2023.

When the Seattle Seahawks traded Russell Wilson in the spring of 2022, it looked like the organization was throwing in the towel on the present and starting a franchise-shifting rebuild. As many teams have done, the conventional opinion suggested Seattle was going to finish dead last in the NFC West and leverage multiple picks to get in the annual quarterback draft sweepstakes.

The sentiment was largely based on the team making no effort in signing another quarterback after acquiring Drew Lock in the Wilson deal. Pete Carroll seemed content with Geno Smith, a player who lasted only two years as a starter with the New York Jets a decade ago – throwing 34 interceptions in 29 starts – and had only started five games in the ensuing six years.

Not only did the Seahawks not tank in the post-Wilson era, they posted a 6-3 start and, while they struggled down the stretch, made the playoffs with a 9-8 record. Smith led the league in completion percentage (69.8) and successfully delivered 399 of 572 passes for 4,282 yards with 30 touchdowns, while rushing 68 times for 366 yards and another TD.

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In most league scoring methods, Smith finished fifth in fantasy points for a quarterback – behind only Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts and Joe Burrow. That’s pretty big company he’s keeping there.

The question being asked this year is whether or not 2022 was a fluke?

Down the stretch when those needing fantasy help at QB chose him, Smith reverted back to old habits. In the seven weeks leading up to the fantasy playoffs (Weeks 15-17 in most leagues), Smith tossed 16 touchdown passes and threw for 264 or more yards in five straight. In the final four games of the season, his passing yardage totals were meager (238-215-183-213), and he threw just five touchdown passes.

Smith proved a lot last season – the stat to focus on is the completion percentage. After six years of NFL irrelevance, Smith posted the kind of consistent fantasy numbers that you look for in a starter, much less a waiver wire pickup. The season didn’t end nearly as strong, but Seattle signed Smith to a three-year deal in the offseason worth up to $105 million, so, for 2023 at least, he isn’t going anywhere.

Fantasy football outlook

Smith has elite, time-hardened weapons in DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett. The quarterback’s run in November and early December was impressive, but the question you need to ask is whether you’re willing to put your season on the line this December with Smith as the guy?

Most rankings and ADP have him right in the middle of the pack – the 14-17 range. The quarterbacks in his immediate vicinity include Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson and Kyler Murray. Two of them are Super Bowl champions and Hall of Famers. The other is only ranked this low because of an injury that will likely sideline him to start the season.

Take any of those players ahead of Smith. He’s 11 years in the league with three years as a full-time starter. If I’m looking for a QB2 on my roster, I want somebody that has a history of huge games as a QB1.

Even after an impressive 2022 season, do not go all-in on Smith being that guy as opposed to other available quarterbacks to fill the roster spot. He’s definitely not a starter but isn’t necessarily an unreasonable backup to a top-flight QB1.

Geno Smith’s three-year, $105 million deal is the latest step in a remarkable journey

Geno Smith never wavered in the face of a downward trend that saw his NFL career nearly end. On Monday, he was rewarded for his persistence.

If you listened to Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider at the scouting combine last week, you probably knew it was coming.

That said, if you know Geno Smith’s history, and even if you watched his remarkable 2022 season, in which he won Comeback Player of the Year, you might still be surprised by Monday’s news that Smith inked a new three-year, $105 million contract to be Seattle’s franchise quarterback.

Because none of this was guaranteed. After the Seahawks traded Russell Wilson to the Broncos in March, and got quarterback Drew Lock in return along with two other players and a windfall of draft picks, all Smith was told was that he would have the opportunity to compete with Lock for the starting job in the 2022 preseason.

That was it. No guarantees for a guy who had disappointed, and been disappointed, along every stop in his NFL journey before this one.

But Smith took it by the horns, won the job, and radically outperformed everybody’s expectations but his own in a season where he completed 424 of 607 passes for 4,535 yards, 32 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, and a passer rating of 100.8. He finished ninth in Football Outsiders’ season-cumulative DYAR metric among qualifying quarterbacks, and 12th in FO’s per-play DVOA metric, having never finished higher than 30th in either one before.

Selected in the second round of the 2013 draft out of West Virginia, Smith had two passable seasons as Gang Green’s starter before everything started to fall apart.

In August, 2015, Smith was involved in an altercation with Jets defensive end IK Enemkpali, which prevented Smith from starting the season. Ryan Fitzpatrick started that season strong, so new head coach Todd Bowles decided to keep Fitzpatrick in that role, even when Smith returned.

Smith didn’t get his next legitimate chance to start for the Jets until Week 7 of the 2016 season against the Baltimore Ravens. He suffered a torn ACL in that game, was lost for the rest of the season, and that was the end of his time with the Jets.

Smith signed with the New York Giants before the 2017 season, and outside of a weird time when he replaced Eli Manning as the team’s starter for a short time (this made him the first Black quarterback to start for the Giants, and it meant that every NFL team had finally had a Black starting quarterback at any time in their histories), he was seemingly doomed forever to the role of backup. That extended through his time with the San Diego Chargers in 2018, when he completed one pass on four attempts for eight yards.

Smith then signed with the Seahawks before the 2019 season, and competed with Paxton Lynch for the job of backup behind Russell Wilson. He was actually released and re-signed at one point, and didn’t take a single snap with Seattle that season. He completed four of five passes for 33 yards in the 2020 season, and finally got his first chances as a starter when Wilson suffered a finger injury in 2021. Then, he completed 65 of 95 passes for 702 yards, five touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 103.0.

Behind the scenes, Smith had become an entirely different and better quarterback, with no guarantee that it would ever pay off.

But at the end of that season, he had firmly established himself as the leader of the team. Smith knew it, all the players knew it, and Carroll and Schneider knew it. The only question was, what to do now — take a risk on the open market and let Smith test the waters, or lock him up to the contract he had finally earned?

The answer, just as it was last week at the combine, was crystal clear.

“It’s a great story now,” Carroll said, when asked why so many other quarterbacks who have the bad side of Smith’s story never see the good side. “There’s other guys that can do the same thing. They get lost and they’re out of the league, and you don’t see him again, there’s so many quarterbacks. We look at the success rate of the quarterbacks coming in and the first rounders and all of that. It’s a startling realization of how many guys don’t make it. Who’s to say? You know, some of those guys make it through Year 4 or 5 or 6 and they hang with the club, you knew that they had enough ability, but you just couldn’t see it come to life, that maybe we have given up on guys too soon. Some of that is themselves too. They have to maintain that connection to the belief in themselves.

“Geno was a remarkable illustration of that. He never wavered. And he expected to win the job, he expected to make the comp, he expected to be successful, he expected to be where he is right now. That’s all part of it. That’s the mental side he brought. I’m not saying everybody’s gonna be like Geno. But that opportunity is certainly there. I think It’s important.”

It is important, and now, Smith has earned his just reward for proving every single doubter wrong.

Marcus Spears: Last year was ‘not a fluke’ for Seahawks QB Geno Smith

Spears says Seattle should stick with Smith as their long-term starter unless they’re blown away by one of the QBs in the 2023 NFL draft class.

Geno Smith should be starting for the Seahawks at quarterback Week 1 next season. That’s what former NFL player and current ESPN analyst Marcus Spears thinks, in any case.

Spears says Seattle should stick with Smith as their long-term starter unless they’re blown away by one of the QBs in the 2023 NFL draft class. Watch.

Spears is right, but the devil is in the details.

We agree that Smith should be the starter for now, but does that mean they should pass on a strong quarterback class? Also, for how much and for how long should Geno be inked in as the Seahawks’ QB1?

The absolute basement for the ongoing contract talks is the value for the franchise tag – which is pegged at a little under $32.5 million for quarterbacks this year. Both parties stand to benefit from avoiding that, though. For one thing, tagging Smith would be terrible for Seattle’s cap situation this year. At the moment they only have around $31 million in total cap space for the season, so they couldn’t afford to tag Smith and also sign their rookie class without making some serious cuts.

Smith can also make a lot more guaranteed money (which is all that really matters to players) if he comes to a longer-term deal with the Seahawks. His signing bonus alone is likely to be at least $50 million. As far as annual average goes, Smith’s fair market value is somewhere in the $40 million per season range. If Seattle’s won’t go there number isn’t too far from that, both sides should be able to work something out relatively soon.

For now, both sides say that the negotiations are going well.

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Yes, Geno Smith deserves the AP Comeback Player of the Year award

A lot of people are asking how Geno Smith won AP Comeback Player of the Year. This voter would like to know who in the NFL has come back from more.

When Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith win the Associated Press Comeback Player of the Year award, there was a bit of blowback from the general public, because the resulting question was… well, what did Smith come back from? 2022 marked his first season as an NFL starter since 2014 with the New York Jets, his second year in the league after the Jets selected him out of West Virginia in 2013. And as Smith had never been transcendent in his career with the Jets — he completed 57.9% of his passes over four seasons with 28 touchdown passes, 36 interceptions, and a passer rating of 72.4 — the question lingered ever more succinctly.

Shouldn’t the award have been given to a player who had come back from injury in the previous season, like Panthers/49ers running back Christian McCaffrey, or Tampa Bay Buccaneers receiver Chris Godwin? Why on earth was a guy who had started just five games from 2015 through the end of the 2021 season regarded as a comeback player at all?

Here’s the basic outline: While the criteria for the award is imprecise, it is typically given to a player who shows perseverance in overcoming adversity from not being able to play the previous season, such as an injury, or for playing well in comparison to the previous year’s poor performance. If a player can come back from such adversity or play at a high level over the previous year, they will usually be favored to win the award. 

Spoiler alert: 2023 is the first year that I’ve been added to the list of voters for all these awards — from First- and Second-Team All-Pro to Offensive and Defensive Players and Rookies of the Year, Coaches and Assistants of the Year, and of course, Comeback Player of the Year. And I voted for Smith without hesitation. My second-place vote went to Godwin, and my third-place vote went to Kansas City Chiefs running back Jerick McKinnon — who, like Smith didn’t just come back from one year of adversity; he came back from several. With all due respect to McCaffrey, who enjoyed a remarkable season with the 49ers, I tended to view the comebacks after several years of darkness to be a bit more impressive. That Smith was able to do that at the game’s most important position, and do it at a Pro Bowl level, makes it all the more remarkable.

Okay, smart guy, you may be asking once again… what did Smith actually come back from?

In August, 2015, Smith was involved in an altercation with Jets defensive end IK Enemkpali, which prevented Smith from starting the season. Ryan Fitzpatrick started that season strong, so new head coach Todd Bowles decided to keep Fitzpatrick in that role, even when Smith returned.

Smith didn’t get his next legitimate chance to start for the Jets until Week 7 of the 2016 season against the Baltimore Ravens. He suffered a torn ACL in that game, was lost for the rest of the season, and that was the end of his time with the Jets.

Smith signed with the New York Giants before the 2017 season, and outside of a weird time when he replaced Eli Manning as the team’s starter for a short time (this made him the first Black quarterback to start for the Giants, and it meant that every NFL team had finally had a Black starting quarterback at any time in their histories), he was seemingly doomed forever to the role of backup. That extended through his time with the San Diego Chargers in 2018, when he completed one pass on four attempts for eight yards.

Smith then signed with the Seahawks before the 2019 season, and competed with Paxton Lynch for the job of backup behind Russell Wilson. He was actually released and re-signed at one point, and didn’t take a single snap with Seattle that season. He completed four of five passes for 33 yards in the 2020 season, and finally got his first chances as a starter when Wilson suffered a finger injury in 2021. Then, he completed 65 of 95 passes for 702 yards, five touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 103.0.

Behind the scenes, Smith had become an entirely different and better quarterback, with no guarantee that it would ever pay off.

Then, the 2022 season, when the blockbuster Wilson trade left Seattle in need of a new starting quarterback. Before Smith could become That Guy, he would have to compete with Drew Lock, who the Seahawks got in that trade. It wasn’t really a contest, and Smith came into the 2022 season as the starter… at home… against Wilson and the Broncos.

No pressure, right?

All Smith did in that game was to complete 23 of 28 passes for 195 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 119.5.

Whoever wrote Geno Smith off, he ain’t writing back after big Seahawks win

From there, Smith established himself as the post-Wilson starter with performances that nobody but Smith himself could have expected. He finished the 2022 season with a league-best completion rate of 69.9%, 32 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, and a passer rating of 100.8. For the first time in his nine-year career, Smith had finally been able to realize his potential.

Now again, the criteria for Comeback Player of the Year is not exact. We are not directed to vote for a player who had already established himself as a start, fell off due to injury in one season, and came back in the next season.

And I’m glad that’s the case, because the way I’ll answer the “What has Geno Smith come back from” question is to simply respond:

Who in today’s NFL has come back from more?

Geno Smith focused on making playoffs, not revenge angle vs. Jets

Smith has some extra incentive to push Seattle into the postseason.

Yesterday Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith gave a pro’s pro answer when he was asked about facing his former team on Sunday.

Smith said he was focused on making the playoffs and has a lot of love for the Jets, per the team website.

“I just feel like the importance of it is that we need a win to get to the playoffs… Obviously, there will be some speculation and talk about that, it comes with the territory; it’s to be expected. I have a lot of love for the Jets, the organization and the people that are still there that were there when I got drafted. For me and this team, it’s business as usual, another week to prepare and a tough challenge for us to go out there and try to get this win. We need it.”

Smith has some extra incentive to push Seattle into the postseason. If they clinch a playoff berth and Smith plays 80% of the team’s snaps he will get a $2 million bonus.

It won’t be easy, though. ESPN’s playoff machine has their chances at 27.8%, while the New York Times’ model has them at just 21%.

Practically, that means they’ll need to beat both the Jets and the Rams and might need a little bit of extra luck to go their way, as well.

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Seahawks expected to offer ‘long-term’ contract to Geno Smith after season

According to a report by Ian Rapoport at NFL Network, the Seahawks are expected to offer quarterback Geno Smith a “long-term” contract after this season is over.

According to a report by Ian Rapoport at NFL Network, the Seahawks are expected to offer quarterback Geno Smith a “long-term” contract after this season is over.

Smith has definitely proven himself a worthy starter this season – in fact he’s been playing at a top-five level. The only question here is what the definition of long-term means to Seattle, what it means to Smith, and if there’s room to meet somewhere in the middle.

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Could Geno Smith be the Seahawks’ quarterback of the future?

Geno Smith has surprised just about everybody as the Seahawks’ quarterback this season. Doug Farrar posits that it might be more than a one-year thing.

Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll has said for years that he envisions his ideal quarterback as a “point guard.”

Before the 2022 season started, and as the Seahawks prepared for their season-opening matchup against Russell Wilson and the Denver Broncos, Carroll was asked just what that meant. It was a verbose response, and it’s something Carroll’s obviously thought a lot about.

“Yeah, it’s just the way I’ve learned to appreciate the position. I really learned to appreciate through the San Francisco system, way back when, when Coach [Bill] Walsh was there and what he did with his guys, Joe [Montana] and Steve [Young] and how he talked about it and how he expected them to play and what their role was in a football team’s approach. He designed his offenses; he’s the most brilliant guy to ever coach the game.

“He designed his offense to make it as easy as possible for the quarterbacks because he knew the position was so hard to play. And remember all the catch and run stuff and all the quick rhythm stuff that he was famous for, that was so the quarterback didn’t have to be carrying the load. He can get the ball out of his hands, working with his line and his guys and all that. That just has always resonated. That’s what West Coast is. West Coast is long lost from where it was, but that was all of Coach Walsh’s image of what that position and how it should function in terms of how a team plays football. They’ve featured a tremendous amount of short passing game. He was kind of the guy that started all that.

“So, I’m kind of a hoops guy. Maybe that’s why that reference comes out.”

Why it comes out is important in that new starting quarterback Geno Smith has seemed to be the perfect distillation of Carroll’s quarterback preferences.

Whoever wrote Geno Smith off, he ain’t writing back after big Seahawks win

Through the first four games of the 2022 season as the Seahawks’ post-Wilson starter, Smith has completed 102 of 132 passes for 1,037 yards, six touchdowns, and two interceptions. His completion rate of 77.3% is the second-highest for any quarterback in the first four games of a season in NFL history (behind only Tom Brady in 2007), and going back to last season when he was Wilson’s injury replacement for three starts, Smith has a four-game stretch from October through October in which he has the fourth-highest completion rate (78.2%) inany four-game stretch in league annals.

This would lead you to believe that Smith is nothing more than a Captain Checkdown, but that’s not the case. His 7.9 yards per attempt average has him tied with Atlanta’s Marcus Mariota for fourth-best in the NFL, and he’s completed seven of 13 passes of 20 or more air yards for 167 yards, three touchdowns, and one interception.

Through those first four weeks, Smith ranks second in DVOA (Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted per-play efficiency metric) for quarterbacks, behind only Tua Tagovailoa. He ranks third in DYAR, FO’s cumulative efficiency metric, behind only Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert. 

Not bad, and quite surprising, for a 2013 second-round pick who’s been more journeyman and backup than rockstar through his NFL career. Smith won the NFC’s Offensive Player of the Week award on Wednesday after he riddled the Detroit Lions with 23 completions in 30 attempts (76.7 percent) for 320 yards and two touchdowns with no interceptions and a 132.6 passer rating, while also rushing for 49 yards and a touchdown in Seattle’s 48-45 Week 4 victory over the Detroit Lions.

It wasn’t just the stats that stood out; it’s the ways in which Smith has taken control of this offense that has me thinking he’s more than a bridge quarterback between Wilson and whoever is available in free agency or the draft in 2023.

Geno Smith on why he hasn’t gotten more games as a starter: ‘We all know what it is’

In a Twitter post this morning, Smith claimed “we all know why” he hasn’t had more run as a starter in this league.

Geno Smith got to start three games for the Seahawks last season when Russell Wilson went down with a finger injury. That was the first real opportunity he had as a team’s QB1 since the 2014 season with the Jets. For a player who came into the league with a decent amount of hype as a second-round draft pick, that’s not a whole lot of time on the field.

In a Twitter post this morning, Smith claimed “we all know” why he hasn’t had more run as a starter in this league.

We’ll assume it has something to do with the color of his skin, especially considering that over the years he’s been lower on the depth chart than Bryce Petty and the ghost of Eli Manning.

Whether you can handle the truth or not, the fact is black QBs have historically not been offered the same opportunities white ones have, even when they’re superior athletically. The fact that Colin Kaepernick and Cam Newton are currently free agents while duds like Mason Rudolph and Sam Darnold still have jobs in the NFL speaks for itself.

Fortunately for Smith, Pete Carroll is on the right side of this issue.

This summer Smith will be competing with Drew Lock for the right to replace Wilson as Seattle’s QB1. Unless the team brings in a better option like Baker Mayfield, we expect Smith to win that battle and start Week 1 against the Broncos.

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