The Seattle Seahawks did not win in Week 5. This was, for the most part, not Geno Smith’s fault.
Sure, Smith took an awful sack on his last play of the game, losing 14 yards on third-and-2 before Seattle punted the ball back to the New Orleans Saints finish a 39-32 game. The bigger story, however, was the journeyman quarterback’s effort to erase a 12-point fourth quarter deficit — and prove that his breakout season is sustainable, even on the eve of his 32nd birthday.
Smith finished his day with 268 passing yards and three touchdowns on only 25 attempts. With starting running back Rashaad Penny out due to a broken leg and staring down a 31-19 fourth quarter deficit, Russell Wilson’s former backup drove his team on back-to-back scoring drives of 75-plus yards. More impressively, he only needed five plays to score 13 points.
GENO SMITH! Absolute dime to Tyler Lockett.
📺: #SEAvsNO on FOX
📱: Stream on NFL+ https://t.co/X4lelc0SFE pic.twitter.com/q7bsLXUerr— NFL (@NFL) October 9, 2022
Smith was, for the third straight week, electric through the air. In that stretch, he’s responsible for more than 900 passing yards. He’s thrown for seven touchdowns and rushed for one more while only turning the ball over once. On Sunday he attempted four passes that sailed at least 25 yards past the line of scrimmage. All four were complete. Three were touchdowns.
Smith has been responsible for at least seven expected points added (EPA) in all five of his starts in 2022. Russell Wilson’s been responsible for 3.2 EPA, total, in five games as a Denver Bronco. Wilson, free to cook in Denver, has completed 10 of his 26 deep balls (20-plus yards downfield), or 38.5 percent. Smith has nearly as many deep connections despite blasting off considerably less often — he’s at nine of 15 attempts (60 percent).
This is all part of a small sample size, but it keeps expanding and Smith keeps living up to his own hype. For a player on a one-year contract worth $3.5 million — a player who famously told reporters “they wrote me off, I ain’t write back though” after beating Denver in Week 1 — this is immensely valuable.
Smith is currently paid as the league’s 38th-most valuable quarterback, tied with Joe Flacco and a smidge ahead of Nick Foles. He’s brought a top-five performance to the table — after four weeks, no quarterback in the league was more efficient, per the league’s Next Gen Stats model.
There is, unfortunately, the matter of wins and losses. Smith’s Seahawks are 2-3 in a suddenly winnable NFC West. A playoff spot is there for the taking, but a defense that in no way, shape or form resembles the Legion of Boom can’t live up to its quarterback’s example. Seattle has given up 111 points in the last three weeks. Only one other team in the league had given up as many in the first four games of the 2022 regular season.
This may actually benefit Seattle, who held onto key offensive stars like DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett instead of trading them away, re-signed Penny (who averaged better than six yards per carry before Sunday’s broken leg) and used the 2022 NFL Draft to add a pair of offensive line bookends who appear to be foundational pieces for the next decade-plus in Charles Cross and Abe Lucas.
Losing games despite a good offense will shift focus to the defense that so badly needs rebuilding. As the Seahawks and Broncos — who owe Seattle their 2023 first- and second-round picks — struggle, the opportunity for a quick turnaround grows. Despite Smith’s efficiency, 2022 won’t be a playoff year for Seattle. But with a healthy Jamal Adams back in the lineup and some young pass-rushing help paired with an estimated $54 million in cap space — fourth-most in the league, per Over the Cap — 2023 could be.
That all depends on Smith keeping this pace and also re-signing with Pete Carroll’s team. Given his history — a 105.7 passer rating in Seattle and a 72.7 rating anywhere else — there are pretty good odds he’d stick around if given a market value contract extension.
What would that look like? Probably something like three years and $75 million. That sounds steep until you realize Blake Bortles and Case Keenum were both making $18 million in average annual salary back in 2018 after similar breakthrough seasons and, well, the highest QB salary has risen from $33 million to $50 million in that stretch.
The Seahawks aren’t very good in 2022, but they are extremely fun. That’s thanks to Smith, a quarterback who was locked in a quarterback battle with Drew by-god Lock back in August.
If he can keep this up, Seattle has all the ingredients to get a playoff stew going. Not in 2022, mind you — but 2023 could be a return to form for a franchise that’s typically been a perennial playoff presence under Carroll.
