Ghosts of QB's past

Week 2

A week ago, some moron proclaimed Russell Wilson the most irrelevant starting quarterback in the NFL.

I was wro …

I was wwwwrrrrroooo …

I was wwwwwwwwwwwwrrrrrrrrrrroooooo …

I was perhaps a bit hasty.

All Wilson did in Week 2 was throw for 452 yards, including a 48-yard touchdown to Malik Nabors with 25 seconds left in the fourth quarter.

The Giants didn’t win the game, though, and it was the overtime interception that got top billing on the back page of the New York Daily News:

After two games, Wilson leads the league with 618 yards passing.

Geno Smith, on the other hand, has been intercepted four times, most of any player in the league, and if Week 1 was evidence that Seattle may have made a mistake in failing to re-sign him, Week 2 was a strong case for why the Seahawks put a limit on how much they were willing to offer him.

Smith is a gunslinger-type quarterback, meaning he has both the courage and the confidence to attempt some incredibly difficult throws. To his credit, he’s talented enough to complete these throws. To his detriment, he’s so confident in his ability to complete these passes that he puts the ball in places where the defense can contest it.

That happened on his first pass on Monday as a Chargers safety came crashing down, deflecting a ball that was intended for receiver Tre Tucker into the hands of linebacker Daiyan Henley.

It happened on a pass into the end zone with 6 minutes left in the game. Facing third-and-15, Smith threw a dart toward Jakobi Meyers in the end zone only to have Chargers safety Derwin James make a great play on the ball, deflecting it and resulting in an interception.

The Raiders trailed by 11 points at the time. Had Smith’s pass not been intercepted, they could have kicked a field goal to make it a one-score game. Those are the kind of risks that Smith seems increasingly prone to taking.

In his first year as Seattle’s starter, he was picked off 11 times, tied for 10th in the league. In his second season, that number went down to nine. Last season, he was intercepted 15 times, third-most of any quarterback in the league and through two games he has been picked off four times.

Week 1

Geno Smith led the Raiders to a touchdown on their opening drive of their Week 1 game against New England.

This was something that he failed to do in Seattle last season when the Seahawks were one of three teams in the league that never scored a touchdown on their opening possession.

The Raiders’ second drive, however, ended in an interception as Smith’s pass for tight end Brock Bowers was tipped by a Patriots cornerback and then caught by a safety. Las Vegas didn’t score again in the half, missing a field goal on the final play of the second quarter.

That first half was Exhibit A for why I wasn’t all that worried about the Seahawks decision to move on from Smith.

Yes, he could look great in spots, in large part because of his confidence in attempting difficult throws. That confidence made him prone to back-breaking mistakes, though, and while he got Seattle to the cusp of the playoffs last season, his turnovers wound up being a prime reason the Seahawks didn’t win the games that would have put them in the postseason.

In the second half, however? Smith was good enough to make me wonder if Seattle will end up regretting the inability to re-sign him.

Smith was 13-for-15 passing for 222 yards, leading three scoring drives of more than 50 yards.

As for Sam Darnold? I thought he played fine though he wasn’t given much in the way of opportunities. Seattle was true to its word about running the ball. The Seahawks were one of six teams in the league with more rushing plays than pass plays in Week 1.

The two times the Seahawks let him step on the gas, he did, leading a scoring drive in the final minute of the first half and putting Seattle in position to score the go-ahead touchdown in the final minute of the fourth quarter.

That was markedly better than what another former Seahawks quarterback, and while New York isn’t blaming Russell Wilson for the Giants’ inability to score a touchdown, he’s not seen as the solution, either: an afterthought in New York.