Geno Smith, Seattle Seahawks.
Ten games into the 2022 season and the Seattle Seahawks sit in first place in the NFC West by a half-game with a record of 6-4. If the playoffs started today, they would be the three-seed hosting a rematch with the New York Giants. This week they are on bye and get some much-deserved time off to prepare for the final playoff drive.
Much of this season’s success is due to quarterback Geno Smith and his wristband. Jokes aside, we’re going to look at Smith’s Phoenix-like career. Well, at least the part of his career with the Seattle Seahawks.
So, why all the surprise to the success of Smith this season? He was a highly touted quarterback prospect coming out of college.
Prior to this season, Smith had a career 58.8% completion rate with a 3.4 touchdown percentage rate and a 3.7 interception rate. For every touchdown pass, he also threw a pass to the opponent.
Smith’s production this season has been way outside of his career norm. He leads the NFL with a 72.8% completion rate. Right behind him is Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa, at 71%.
Smith currently ranks sixth among NFL quarterbacks at a 5.4 TD percentage rate and fifth at a 1.3 INT percentage rate in the NFL. So, now he is completing a high rate of his passes and has almost a four-to-one touchdown to interception ratio.
Looking back at his two previous seasons with Seattle, there was a small amount of indication that his current success could be possible for the Seattle Seahawks. That is, projecting the results if Smith became the team’s starter.
We know what happened with that narrative. There isn’t much to glean from his 2020 season, as he got into only one game and completed 4 of 5 pass attempts for 33 scoreless yards.
So our focus moves on to last season. In 2021, Smith played four games, starting three.
On October 7, he came on in relief of an injured Russell Wilson against the LA Rams. In that game, he completed 10 of 17 passes for 131 yards with one touchdown and an interception.
A quick glance and it’s not a bad performance. However, a closer look reveals this was a standard Smith production; 58% completion rate and a 1:1 TD: INT rate.
The next three games are where the 12s get their first glimpse into what a Smith-led offense could look like.
In those three starts, he completed 71% of his passes with four touchdowns and zero interceptions. Smith did have a costly strip-sack fumble, courtesy of T.J. Watt, late in the game against Pittsburgh, which led to the Steelers’ game-winning field goal.
It would have been nice if Smith led Seattle to a few more touchdowns, as the team averaged just 20.3 points per game. But this small three-game sample planted a seed.
That seed was what the Seattle Seahawks could be like without Wilson as their quarterback. The team could win games without the whole “Let Russ Cook” thing hovering over the Virginia Mason Athletic Center like a dark cloud.
To be honest, only two people actually saw this possibility, Head Coach Pete Carroll and General Manager John Schneider. Maybe that’s why they granted Wilson’s trade request and re-signed Smith to a 1-year, $7M contract.
They were in the minority. Not very many people saw Smith’s level of success this season happening.
As long as Geno plays at this level, the Seattle Seahawks will be in every remaining game this season. A comfort level that Seahawks fans didn’t have back in August.
The national media and big gambling organizations won’t favor the Seattle Seahawks to win many games. But 12s can feel good believing the Seahawks can win most of their remaining games.