3 Nov. 2022
By: Eric Yin
SEATTLE – The big story in Seattle this week is the Mariners. After ending their twenty-year-long playoff drought, the Mariners won their first playoff series since 2001 in historic fashion. Despite being down 8-1 against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Mariners rallied back and became just the third team in MLB history to win from down 7+ runs in the postseason. While the Mariners may have attracted the attention of Seattle locals, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith should have the nation’s eye.
Geno Smith’s NFL career began unceremoniously 3000 miles east of Seattle in New York. Drafted in 2013 with the 39th pick to the historically defunct New York Jets, Smith was put in a position to fail. His offensive line featured a rookie left guard and three veterans who would all retire within two seasons. His best offensive weapon was 29-year-old Santonio Holmes, who despite winning a Super Bowl MVP was past his prime and would retire a year later. His head coach was a “defensive expert” in Rex Ryan, yet the Jets’ defense ranked 20th in points allowed. With no threats on the perimeter, an aging offensive line, a lackluster defense, and a conservative head coach, it was no surprise Smith struggled in his debut season. After a rough rookie season, the Jets rotated between 34-year-old Michael Vick and Geno Smith before benching Smith for the foreseeable future. For the next seven years from 2015-2021, Geno Smith backed up future Hall of Famers Eli Manning and Russell Wilson in New York and Seattle respectively, waiting for a starting opportunity that may never come. However, after Russell Wilson surprisingly forced his way to Denver in 2022 the Seahawks starting job was open. With no other option, the Hawks reluctantly named Smith the starter just one week before the season started. Smith had finally gotten his second chance nine years since he was drafted in 2013.
Now five weeks into the season, it seems stupid to have doubted Geno Smith. He has posted a monstrous 77.2% completion rate, the highest completion percentage through four starts in NFL history. Smith’s biggest criticism in the past has been his timid decision-making and inability to make the big play. Smith is currently ranked eighth in completions over 20 yards and has an average depth of target of 8.1 yards which is right around the league average. He has also done it against elite competition, playing the 1st, 5th, 16th, and 20th-ranked pass defenses. Through those four games, he’s put up 261 yards per game with a 10-2 TD/INT ratio. By all metrics, Smith has been a top-10 quarterback in the league.
On Sunday against the New Orleans Saints, Smith continued to prove the doubters wrong by throwing for 268 yards and 3 touchdowns. Yet the numbers don’t show just how impressive Smith was throughout the game. Early in the second, Smith aired a perfect ball over two defenders to star wide receiver D.K Metcalf who failed to maintain control of the 30-yard touchdown ball as he hit the turf. Similarly, on the first drive of the second half Smith had three different receivers bobble or drop passes. Later in that same quarter, Smith once again found a wide-open Metcalf in the endzone on a 40-yard strike, yet the play got called back due to a phantom holding penalty on rookie left tackle Charles Cross. It was so egregious that play-by-play announcer Brandon Gaudin deemed it “one of the weakest calls he’s ever seen.” Smith could have easily thrown for 350 yards and 5 touchdowns, which would have made him the first quarterback in franchise history to throw for over 300 yards in three consecutive games. Even though the Seahawks currently sit at 2-3, the offense under Geno Smith has kept the team in nearly every game. It is head coach Pete Carroll’s defense that has cost the Seahawks two late-game leads against the Falcons and the Saints. Through five games, Smith appears to be a lock for Comeback Player of the Year and has kept the rebuilding Seahawks competitive in a winnable NFC West.
While Geno Smith’s career path has been anything but traditional, those aspects of his story are what make him the embodiment of the American story. Perennial backups don’t just become star players nine years into their careers. He wasn’t the most talented quarterback. He wasn’t the franchise quarterback from the start. He wasn’t drafted to the perfect situation, and he wasn’t given many chances. But what Geno Smith did have was his dedication. Even when everyone in the world said that he would never become a great NFL quarterback, he put his head down and continued to work. And when his opportunity finally came, he made the most of it. The Geno Smith story is a powerful message to all hard-working Americans that no matter how improbable your dreams are, you can make them come true through perseverance and self-belief. Even if it takes you nine years to do so.
As in the words of Geno Smith: “They wrote me off, I ain’t write back though.”