Soaring Geno Smith blessed not vengeful: ‘My tough times would be a dream to someone else’
Everyone else thinks Geno Smith should be the runaway winner of the NFL comeback player of the year award.
Losing his only full-time time starting job before this year because a teammate broke his jaw with a sucker punch in the New York Jets locker room seven years ago. Seven years as a back-up quarterback bouncing around the league with four teams. Never with the security of a multiyear contract, beyond his rookie deal from 2013 with the Jets.
“Geno’s strong mentally, man. He’s come a long way in this league,” Seahawks wide receiver and captain Tyler Lockett said.
“The things that he’s experienced and the things that he’s overcome, drives like this, I mean, that’s probably nothing to him from what he’s overcome.”
Thing is, Smith doesn’t think he’s overcome much in his NFL career.
He feels blessed by it.
The 32-year-old,husband, father and veteran of 10 NFL seasons, overcame the long way before he arrived in the league. The native of Miami was raised by his grandmother who worked in an elementary school cafeteria to support him.
So now, in the middle of the best season of his football life at the sport’s highest level, the 32-year-old formerly forgotten quarterback wants to know exactly what it is he’s supposed t0 have come back from.
“I can’t say it was tough, because I have been so blessed,” Smith said.
“Honestly, my tough times would be a dream to someone else.”
His out-of-nowhere 2022 season has been a dream to the Seahawks.
Geno Smith changes Seahawks plans
When the Seahawks traded Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos for top picks in this year’s and next year’s draft plus veterans tight end Noah Fant, defensive tackle Shelby Harris and quarterback Drew Lock, their plan was to have Smith and Lock, who had started for the Broncos, compete for the Seahawks’ job this year. Both quartebacks are in the final year of their contracts.
The longer-term vision for coach Pete Carroll and general manager John Schneider was to find their quarterback for 2023 and beyond in next year’s draft.
Thanks to the Wilson trade, Seattle has four picks in the first two rounds next spring. Scouts across the league feel this next draft is full of plug-and-play quarterbacks ready to start in the NFL, from Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud to Alabama’s Bryce Young, and so on.
Smith won the job for this year in what really wasn’t much of a competition with Lock this summer. Carroll trusted Smith, from the three games he started going 1-2 when Wilson was out with a broken finger for Seattle last season. The locker room knew Smith. He knew offensive coordinator Shane Waldron and his system. Lock turned the ball over in the preseason, adding to Carroll’s assessment that Lock was “a gunslinger.”
On Sept. 12 against Wilson and Denver, Smith became the first quarterback in 50 years with eight years between NFL opening-game starts. He beat Wilson. After that national showcase Monday night game, Smith looked into an ESPN camera on the field and said: “They wrote me off. I ain’t write back, though.”
Smith then filed to have that quip patented.
For the first two games of Smith’s new Seahawks job, Carroll and Waldron had a governor on him. Used to years of poor pass protection and unsure how Smith would play after not doing that much in eight years, the coaches had Smith throwing the league’s shortest, safest passes, just over 5 air yards per attempt. After San Francisco smacked Seattle 27-7 playing that way in week two, Carroll told Waldron to turn Smith loose.
The results: Smith is the league’s leader in completion percentage (72.7%). That’s the fourth-highest rate by a regularly starting QB in the first 12 games of a season in league history. This season he’s second only to Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa in passer rating (108.7).
He enters Seattle’s home game Sunday against Carolina (4-8) tied for fourth in the NFL with 22 touchdown passes, against just six interceptions.
His 22nd TD, to DK Metcalf in the final minute of last weekend’s game in Inglewood, California, rallied the Seahawks past the Rams 27-23. It was Smith’s first fourth-quarter comeback drive to win a game in eight years.
After that game, Carroll, Lockett and other Seahawks marveled — again — about Smith’s poise and his mental toughness.
“I’m telling you, that this dude’s mindset is different,” Lockett said. “Even when we are playing a video game, you better be on your P’s and Q’s or otherwise you will have a bad time playing with each other.
“I just think that he demands the best and he demands greatness. If he demands it from other people, you better believe that he demands it for himself.”
Now, Smith is in line for a new contract and pay raise that will change his life — and those of generations of his family. His $850,000 base salary for this year could become $25 million or more next year, the way he’s played.
Smith’s reading of defenses
Thursday, play-caller Waldron said Smith’s understanding of defenses has set him apart this season.
“Both pre-snap and then reacting to some of the post-snap stressful looks that defenses throughout the year have provided to us,” Waldron said. “Then when the chances have come to throw the ball down the field, he has taken those opportunities. When the defense might play it deep to short, he has done a really good job of taking completions throughout the course of a game, and really not put the ball in the peril where there might be a look that is not perfect.
“He has done a great job of getting out of some plays that were covered nicely. He improvises and plays off schedule, so he has done a little mix of everything at a high level consistently throughout the season.”
Sunday, that season will become his longest since he also started 13 games for the 2014 Jets, his second and final season as their starter. He’s taken more hits than he has in eight years.
Yet he said his body is in prime condition, deep into December, for this Seahawks playoff push.
He said he’s learned over the last decade to eat better. That’s allowed him to recover quickly from the car crashes of playing in an NFL game.
“I don’t eat a lot of red meat. Those are the things that cause inflammation,” Smith said, adding he’s a fish-and-chicken guy. “I stay away from the things that cause inflammation, and eat high energy foods, and foods that produce lean body mass.”
Unlike a former Seahawks quarterback, Smith doesn’t have a nutritionist and a chef as part of a posse of personal employees that number in the double digits.
His $850,000 base salary for this season gets spent on other things. So who cooks his no-red-meat meals?
“My wife does,” Smith said.
An NFL MVP season?
This season for the first time NFL MVP voting ballots will ask the 50 voters nationwide to rank choices 1 through 5. In the past, voters just submitted one name.
So it is that Smith is likely to get his first career vote(s) for league MVP before Wilson does. Wilson, whose contract with Denver is worth $241.5 million more than Smith’s ending one with Seattle, has yet to earn an MVP vote in his 11-year career.
Asked this week for one word he would use to describe the season Smith is having, Metcalf said: “Phenomenal. MVP-caliber.
“Go with the second one, MVP-caliber.”
Metcalf’s not far off.
Smith has 12 consecutive games completing at least 60% of his throws with a passer rating of at least 80. That ties an NFL record to begin a season.
Each of the three other players to do that won the league’s most valuable player award to end that season: Aaron Rodgers in 2011, Peyton Manning in 2009, Steve Young in 1992.
And get this: Thanks to Wilson and his offense being terrible this season in Denver, the Seahawks currently own the third-overall choice in 2023.
Thanks to Smith, Seattle — picked by Las Vegas oddsmakers to finish 5-12 this season — are 7-5 and holding the final playoff spot in the NFC with five games remaining. The Seahawks are a game behind the 49ers for the NFC West, and host San Francisco at Lumen Field four days after hosting Carolina.
The Seahawks have a strong chance to make the playoffs and have a top-three pick in the next draft.
That’s livin’.
Yet Carroll feigned obliviousness to that this week.
“Well, everybody else is following that one,” Carroll said. “I know that (the Broncos) are having a hard time with it right now and that helps our number go up the board.
“It’s not a real topic I’m thinking right now.”
That, as the kids say, “is cap.”
Smith?
He’s been thinking he’d play like this for eight years. If only he’d been given the chance.
Asked Thursday if anything has surprised him about his remarkable season, he said flatly and with a face as straight as his arrow throws: “Nothing at all. No.
“Exactly as planned. You can ask anybody. You can check my Instagram, my Twitter. I’ve been saying this for a while.
“I’ve always believed that if I continue to work hard, I have the ability to do some things. And I’ve been around a lot of quarterbacks. I’ve been around the game my entire life. I’ve seen a lot of great players. And I’m really confident in myself.
“Not in a cocky way. But I know what I can do out there.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2022 at 6:47 PM.
