Like Russell Wilson years ago, Seahawks’ Geno Smith’s ‘round-the-clock’ treatment to play
He’s not asserting he’s doing it 20 hours a day, every day.
And, no, he didn’t do high knees up and down the aisle of the Seahawks’ plane on their flight home from their loss last weekend at San Francisco.
Yet like Russell Wilson years before him as Seattle’s banged-up quarterback, Geno Smith says he’s getting “around-the-clock” treatment on his strained groin and bruised throwing arm so he can start Monday night against Philadelphia.
“It’s definitely helped me,” Smith, 33, said Friday of the constant treatment plus the extra day off the Seahawks (6-7) have had this week between their fourth consecutive loss on Sunday at the 49ers and the Monday night home game against the Eagles (10-3).
“I’m getting better every, single day. Been working around the clock trying to get my body as healthy as possible to go out there and be able to play.”
Asked if he thinks he will start as he has for all but one time the last two Seahawks seasons Monday night, Smith said: “We’ll see.
“Just feeling better. Just feeling better in that (groin) area. And, obviously, my entire body is a work in progress. But more so than Sunday (at San Francisco, a game he missed) I’m able to be a little more mobile.”
Smith backed up Wilson in Seattle for three seasons, until the team traded Wilson to Denver in the spring of 2022. Wilson said last year he was doing high-knee exercises during the Broncos’ eight-hour flight to London to keep his injured hamstring loose to play against Jacksonville that week.
Wilson famously said in 2016 after he sprained his knee and ankle and was told by doctors he should miss four weeks that he was getting treatment 20 hours a day in order to keep playing.
Wilson said for a month after he got hurt that 2016 Seahawks season he set his alarm by his bed to get up in the middle of the night to continue his rehabilitation on his sprained left knee and sprained right ankle. He flew his personal physical therapist up from California and had his personal masseuse with him. They had a program that included Wilson getting up, usually around 3 or 4 a.m., for more ice and perhaps one-legged squats, to hasten the healing of his sprained medial collateral knee ligament and what was believed to be a high-ankle sprain.
Smith said Friday he has brought a therapist into his home, too.
“Yeah, early in the morning I’m waking up 5 a.m.,” Smith said. “And then when I get home from work, I get home around 6 or 7 (p.m.), something like that, I get right back to it at 8 o’clock. (Treatments are) right before bed and right when I wake up.
“I have someone come over and work on it.”
Smith injured his groin stumbling over a teammate following a throw in practice last Thursday. He tested the leg Sunday morning in Santa Clara, California, hours before kickoff but could not move laterally enough to play against the 49ers.
Backup Drew Lock made his first Seahawks start, his first one in the NFL since the end of the 2021 season for the Denver Broncos. Lock completed 22 of 31 passes for 269 yards, a touchdown pass to DK Metcalf, two interceptions in the fourth quarter and four sacks.
Seattle lost 28-16 to the Niners. It leaves the Seahawks on the brink of losing realistic playoff hopes with four games remaining.
“They felt I wasn’t going to be my best self, so they held me back,” Smith said of Sunday in Santa Clara. “But, shoot, I was going to push it and give it all I got. That’s kind of how I’m wired.”
The Seahawks’ defense allowed 500 yards by San Francisco for the second time in three games. It may not have mattered if Smith, Lock, Wilson in his Seattle best — or, heck, Joe Montana in his prime — started at quarterback for the Seahawks against the rolling, 10-3 49ers.
Asked if some of the team’s thinking was to hold him out of playing at San Francisco so he could be healthier to play the final four games of the season, Smith shook his head side to side.
“No, that’s not my thought process,” Smith said.
He’d waited seven years as a backup for four NFL teams on seven one-year contracts before he got this Seahawks job last year, then a three-year, $75 million contract before this season,
“I want to play every, single game, every snap, be out there for every practice.”
Signs of Geno Smith playing
Smith practiced Thursday and Friday. The team listed him as a limited participant Thursday.
The Seahawks had him in a press conference Friday and practicing this week after not doing it at all last week: signs he will play Monday night.
“He feels really good,” Carroll said Thursday. “He threw the heck out of the ball in (Thursday) morning session, so we’ll see what happens...with the hope that he’s ready to go.
“If not, Drew is going to be there.”
Carroll said Smith and Lock are both getting first-team plays in the offense this week.
It appears the Seahawks are having Smith skip moving around giving hand-offs in practices to preserve his leg.
“Blending (the first-team reps) a little bit,” Lock said. “Some of the basic runs I’ll go in and take, have him take a play off.
“But we’ll blend it a little bit this week.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2023 at 2:38 PM.
