Geno Smith: How Jets QB Has Failed

Geno Smith has been benched in favor of Michael Vick — how did it all happen?

The Geno Smith era likely ended for the New York Jets on Sunday as the 24-year-old quarterback was benched and replaced by a sack skin that used to be Michael Vick.

Smith was atrocious in Week 8 during a 43-23 loss to the Buffalo Bills. He was yanked after just eight attempts, he completed two of those passes for five yards, and three of them were intercepted. That is an impressive level of failure. It might be the most remarkable thing Smith has done in his two-year career.

So far in 2014, Smith has been a complete disaster. He has completed just 56.2 percent of his passes for 1,370 yards, with seven touchdown and 10 interceptions. His quarterback rating (65.6) is dead last in the NFL, while he also ranks last in yards per attempt (5.88) and is 30th out of 31 in Total QBR (27.6). Those numbers are Browning Nagle-esque.

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While some are shocked at the West Virginia product’s rapid demise, they shouldn’t be. Smith was never going to excel in the NFL and a quick film study will show you why.

Before the 2013 NFL Draft, Geno Smith was rated by many as the top quarterback available. He may well have been, but the problem with that draft class is that the overall quality of the signal-callers was incredibly low. How bad was it? The Bills desperately needed a quarterback and took Florida State’s E.J. Manuel with the 16th overall pick. Manuel lost his job to Kyle Orton a few weeks ago. Kyle freaking Orton.

Smith had great numbers at West Virginia, but after looking at his film it’s easy to see that head coach Dana Holgorsen was masking his deficiencies with the team’s offensive scheme. Somehow, several talent evaluators were completely blind to that fact, and the Jets jumped in with both feet by selecting Smith with the 39th overall pick in the draft.

On film it’s evident that Smith probably won’t get any better than he is now, and that’s a pretty low bar to set.

I’ve been writing about the NFL, scouting guys and studying game film years now, and I can say without a shred of hesitation that Geno Smith has the worst pocket awareness I’ve ever seen for a starting quarterback in the league. He has zero internal clock or awareness of the pocket around him. Sometimes he gets jittery and throws the ball too quickly when there’s no one near him, and others he waits far too long to unload it.

Oct 16, 2014; Foxborough, MA, USA; New England Patriots strong safety Patrick Chung (23) tackles New York Jets quarterback Geno Smith (7) during the second half at Gillette Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports /

Smith also has a complete lack of awareness in general. He stares down receivers, doesn’t read defenses and doesn’t shift his weight on his throws. The last element is the most jarring, since his mechanics should be fixed after almost two years working with NFL coaches. On his throws, Smith either throws off his back foot (seen here), or when he does set his feet, his torso is almost always leaning backwards as he releases the ball. That means he’s not getting set over his legs and transferring his weight forward. That leads to throws having less velocity and over- or under-thrown balls.

Here are some examples of what I’m talking about when I say his torso is leaning back. On this throw from Sunday against the Bills, look as he goes to set his feet and throw, his shoulders are in line with his back foot and he never fully rotates forward. The throw will be all arm as a result, since won’t use any of his lower half. As expected, the ball floats and Stephon Gilmore intercepts it. The same thing happens on this play from later in the 1st quarter. In that video you can see he has plenty of time in the pocket and doesn’t step through his throw up the sideline. Again, it floats and is intercepted by Preston Brown.

That kind of a mechanical flaw should have been fixed by now, especially since Smith supposedly spent his offseason tinkering with the problems in his delivery. Getting a good base set and transferring your weight as you throw is Day 1 quarterback stuff. Geno Smith gets paid millions of dollars and should have that much down by now.

Smith also can’t read defenses and throws balls late into coverage far too frequently. On this throw against the Denver Broncos in Week 6, Smith is in his own end zone and stares down his receiver, Jeremy Kerley. Then, despite looking at him for a solid three seconds, the throw into triple coverage comes in a good four yards behind a guy he’s supposed to be leading. The ball winds up not being in the same area code as Kerley.

Smith just isn’t an accurate passer and he doesn’t anticipate where his receivers will be, often throwing to where they were at the time of his release. He doesn’t throw guys open or release balls before they are out of their breaks. Instead he waits far too long to deliver the football, which gives defenses plenty of time to react. On top of that, his ball placement is woeful. When he does complete passes, he almost never hits guys in stride.

Maybe the hardest thing to swallow is how many poor decisions he makes with the ball every game. On this throw from Week 3 against the Chicago Bears, Smith rolls out to his left, then doesn’t really set himself well and flings the ball across his body into the end zone. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t get much on the pass and it is intercepted by Kyle Fuller, who had good coverage on David Nelson to begin with. It was a moronic decision and the kind of thing Smith does a lot.

Sunday’s disaster against the Bills was just the culmination of all those bad habits at once for Geno Smith. This video shows examples of everything I’ve pointed out so far all packed together in a string of highlights so bad I’m amazed the video hasn’t been censored. Like Panama City Beach in late March, it’s a sea of bad decisions, poor execution, a complete lack of maturity and it even burns a little.

The scary thing is, Smith was doing all of those things at West Virginia, he just got away with them against college defenses.

After watching almost every snap Geno Smith has taken in the NFL, my player comparison for him is a less athletic Vince Young. Young is another guy who put up big numbers against college defenses, but did a lot of the same things Smith does as a passer. The difference is that Young could make some plays with his legs. While Smith can scramble a bit, he will never be the runner Young was.

The Geno Smith experiment failed for the New York Jets because he doesn’t learn from his mistakes and hasn’t improved since he entered the league. Smith doesn’t seem to have the drive to make himself better, and there is zero evidence that he is constantly pushing himself and obsessed with being the best quarterback in football. The fact that he missed a meeting before the Jets game with the San Diego Chargers in Week 5, and yelled an expletive at a Jets fan following that loss show that he’s just not the kind of leader a team could get behind and respect. Could you imagine Andrew Luck or Aaron Rodgers ever doing either of those things?

I’m sure Geno Smith wants to be a better quarterback, I just don’t think he has what it takes to actually do it. Nobody should be surprised Smith’s career has gone the way it has.

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