Geno Smith wasn’t perfect, but he had a strong 2022 season for the Seahawks. Strong enough to win Comeback Player of the Year and earn a three-year contract extension, anyway. Smith was the most accurate and the best deep ball thrower in the league last year.
However, around mid-season Smith developed an issue with turnovers. There were a few costly crunchtime fumbles in the red zone as well, but the bigger issue was interceptions. While he was still throwing the ball well, from Week 5 on Smith become a lot more of a liability when it comes to picks, sacks and turnovers.
While we can’t take anything that happens before September too seriously, it sounds like the interception issues may have followed Smith into 2023. According to Mike Dugar at the Athletic, Smith threw six interceptions through the team’s first seven training camp practices.
“Through nine training camp practices, including the mock game, Smith is playing with more freedom and pushing the envelope more. The results have been mostly good, with some notable exceptions: Through the first seven training camp practices, Smith threw six interceptions, which feels like a much higher interception rate than he had in camp last year. That said, Seattle’s current secondary is better than last year’s group and Smith is seemingly having more success this time around…”
To be fair – and as Dugar mentions – Seattle has one of the top secondaries in the league this year including some serious ballhawks. It’s also still early August and it would be absurd for fans to get truly anxious about Smith throwing INTs right now.
All that being said, this was an issue for Geno Smith early in his career with the Jets and re-surfaced in a significant way in the second half of last season. If he can’t stop consistently throwing one pick per game it’ll give Seattle all the motivation they need to pull the trigger on a young quarterback the next time they have a chance to draft one.
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