What he said. Can't believe some people still want to discredit Geno. Top 5 QB 2022. Low miles on the body, best completion percentage in the NFL.
What has people spooked is his looming pay day, his regression and opportunity cost. It's not necessarily just Geno himself. Geno at his current pay rate makes a lot of sense, Geno at 35-40 million per year is a lot harder to swallow. Though, straight up trading for or signing a Carr like figure doesn't make any sense. You're effectively in the same position that you would have been with Geno, only now you have a QB with no familiarity with the offense or receivers. The dude is even around the same age. If Pete traded for Carr, or signed him to a huge contract i'd be pretty angry.
Now, there is some reason to ponder Geno Smith's effectiveness going forward. I don't think he's ever going back to the same dude he was on the Jets. Early in the season he was a master at manipulating defenses at the LOS and he can make some serious WOW throws that 95% of NFL QB's would probably be unable to make. When he's on his accuracy is nutty and he has the ability to fit the ball into some crazy small windows. He has the talent and now he has the maturity.
The issue with Geno Smith is I don't think he has that killer instinct. He's pretty easily rattled and baited into making bad decisions. I've been seeing shades of Jets Geno pop up in our last 8 games. His statline and play has been progressively getting worse. That is something to worry about. In particular, his statline from the last 5 games or so is pretty pedestrian. It was something like a 62 percent completion rate, a Y/A of 6.2 and something like 8 TDs and 5 INTs. You can refer to my post in the Geno Smith regression post somebody made, i have all those stats laid out in detail.
5 games is a pretty long streak to go through that level of play. If we extrapolate that out to 8 games which is where most people put the decline at, his stats look better -- but he also made some critical errors in some of those games.
So the big question remains, what exactly are we getting with Geno Smith? Are we getting a Rich Gannon figure? Are we getting something different? There have been QB's that have gone on really impressive one season, or partial season runs. Think guys like Ryan Fitzpatrick, Nick Foles, Case Keenum and Tommy Maddox.
I like Geno's story and think he has some strong attributes to build on. I don't think he ever is going to be as bad as he was on the Jets. I could see him being a Fitzpatrick sort of guy that floats around the NFL though, and that is what scares me about Geno. Fitzpatrick was the sort of QB that could look like one of the best QB's in the NFL for 7 weeks at a time then regress into lower tier starter levels of play. Paying a Fitzpatrick character 30+ million a year is a scary proposition.
With Geno I'm not sure exactly where he stands in the spectrum of Rich Gannon and Fitzpatricks. There is definitely precedent for both one hit wonders and MVP level of play coming from career backups that get an opportunity. Geno's backsliding definitely is cause for concern.
