RENTON, Wash. — DK Metcalf was annoyed, as he often is when this topic arises.
In came a question during the Seattle Seahawks receiver’s Week 3 news conference, prefaced with a remark about Geno Smith being underrated. Metcalf and Smith both arrived in Seattle in 2019, and this is Smith’s third season as the starting quarterback. Metcalf has been a believer in Smith since the beginning, which is why by December of Smith’s breakout season in 2022, Metcalf complained that the media’s questions about his quarterback had become stale.
So, when a reporter began a question on Sept. 18 with, “A lot about Geno is kind of underrated …” Metcalf scoffed at the premise. Again.
“Man, y’all been calling this man underrated for three years,” Metcalf said. “When is it gon’ stop? He’s not underrated by any means. He’s an NFL quarterback just like 31 other NFL quarterbacks. I don’t think the ‘underrated’ title should be used anymore.”
Metcalf is correct that, locally, much of the discussion about Smith is centered around how he’s suddenly become a competent quarterback after seven years as a backup, and the lack of credit he receives from those outside the Pacific time zone.
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It is also accurate to say the perception of Smith outside of Seattle is not commensurate with his production.
Seattle’s nationally televised game against the Detroit Lions on Monday night could go a long way toward changing that — and determining whether the Seahawks (3-0) will be viewed as a potentially frisky wild-card team or a legitimate contender in the NFC.
“A lot of times people use that word (underrated) because that’s the highest regard that they feel that they could give someone before they put them in the conversation of elite or top quarterbacks,” said veteran receiver Tyler Lockett, another player who has often been labeled underrated. “At some point, he has to be able to get out of that conversation, and you have to start putting him in those conversations where the other top quarterbacks are, based off his play.”
Determining how someone is “rated” is subjective. There are national pundits such as ESPN’s Mina Kimes (a Seahawks fan), NFL analyst Brady Baldinger and former NFL quarterback turned film analyst J.T. O’Sullivan who sing Smith’s praises. Smith is seventh in The Ringer’s QB Rankings, which are updated weekly. ESPN analyst and former NFL QB Dan Orlovsky listed Smith among the league’s most underrated passers in the offseason, but he recently ranked Smith as the fifth-best quarterback through three weeks.
“He’s one of them because, one, of how elite the ball placement has been, and that’s led to yards after the catch,” Orlovsky said, explaining Smith’s top-five status. “Two, the different areas that he’s had success throwing the football down the field; it hasn’t been a ton of dink-and-dunk stuff. Three, the pocket movement has been really remarkable. Four, when they’ve needed him to make plays, he’s made really big plays and really big throws.
“The style of play that he’s had over the first three games this season warranted putting him into that group.”
DK. 71. YARDS. pic.twitter.com/6uQblU6h22
— Seattle Seahawks (@Seahawks) September 22, 2024
That said, Smith didn’t receive much love from around the league this offseason. Between Mike Sando of The Athletic’s QB Tiers that solicit rankings from 50 executives and coaches, ESPN’s survey of 80 executives, coaches and scouts, and the NFL Top 100 list voted on by players, Smith was roughly considered to be between the 17th and 20th best player at his position entering the season.
In 2022, Smith ranked 16th in EPA per dropback (according to TruMedia) and seventh in QBR (according to ESPN) and was an original ballot Pro Bowler while leading Seattle to the postseason. Last season, he finished tied for 14th in EPA per dropback with Baker Mayfield and Kirk Cousins while ranking 14th in QBR, as Seattle felt one game short of the postseason. He had a league-high five game-winning drives and played in the Pro Bowl as an injury replacement.
In response to a question about being underappreciated, Smith said he’s “not really worried about who’s sleeping on me.” But he also recently stated that he feels overlooked, and he called out Orlovsky on X for not classifying him as an elite quarterback. In the offseason, Smith’s agent approached the Seahawks about a new contract, to no avail.
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Asked how Smith could potentially shake the underrated label, Lockett pointed to Seattle’s typical late-afternoon kickoff times.
“It’s hard for any Seahawks players just to be able to get credit because the times that we play,” Lockett said.
Although he’s posted decent numbers, Smith hasn’t played his best games when the lights are brightest. His dropback EPA in his five prime-time regular-season games over the last two seasons is minus-0.08, which is what journeyman quarterback Josh Dobbs posted last season. Smith played well on “Monday Night Football” in 2022, completing 23 of 28 passes for 195 yards with two touchdowns and no turnovers, but the Seahawks were shut out in the second half. Until his famous “I ain’t write back” line, that game was as much about Russell Wilson and Nathaniel Hackett botching the final drive as it was Smith’s performance.
Seattle is 1-3 in Smith’s other four prime-time starts. The lone win came on “Monday Night Football” against the Giants in Week 4 of last season. Smith missed parts of that game with a knee injury and threw for just 110 yards and a touchdown. Two of the other starts were uncompetitive losses to the 49ers in which Smith averaged 209 passing yards and threw just one touchdown (in garbage time).
Last year’s 334-yard, four-total-touchdown performance against the Cowboys on “Thursday Night Football” was easily Smith’s best individual effort in prime time, but in crunch time, he led two failed drives in the final four minutes of a second straight nationally televised loss.
Smith also had two underwhelming seasons as the starting quarterback in the world’s biggest media market (with the Jets), three straight weeks leading unsuccessful drives on national TV with the game on the line in 2021 while filling in for an injured Wilson, a ho-hum standalone game in Germany against Tom Brady’s Buccaneers in 2022 and a blowout loss to the 49ers in the wild-card round of the 2022 playoffs.
Even if those offensive performances weren’t entirely Smith’s fault, the reality of the NFL is that games with more eyeballs have more influence on how a player is perceived. The Geno Smith that Seattle fans and avid tape-grinders watch every week isn’t the one who has been served to the masses.
Playing an excellent game against the Lions, whose defense is much better than the versions Smith shredded each of the last two seasons, would likely alter that perception.
“I think it could be huge,” Orlovsky said. “Having the opportunity on ‘Monday Night Football’ against a really good defense, against a secondary that I think is really good now in Detroit, yeah that would very much so (pose the question), ‘Hey, is this the best team in the NFC? Is this the quarterback that’s playing the best in the NFC?’ It puts them into at least having that conversation.”
Two of Geno Smith’s best career games came at Ford Field in 2022 and 2023. Can he do it again in prime time? (Nic Antaya / Getty Images)
Smith has two traits that players and coaches often cite when talking him up and theorizing about the source of his status as an underrated player. The first is his accuracy, which is reflected by his completion percentage — 68 percent since 2022, fourth in the league in that span — but even his current head coach and offensive coordinator admitted to gaining a new level of appreciation for his ball placement after seeing it up close every day.
The other skill is his ability to process before and after the snap.
“He’s incredibly smart,” safety Julian Love said. “He’s a student of the game. He’s here all day, every day, just studying tape, studying the film, studying the breakdown. He has complete control of the offense. He’s telling the guys where to line up. He knows it all. His mind is so slept on. You see him go through his progressions; you see him make smart decisions because he’s a smart player.”
Pre-snap processing and line-of-scrimmage command are hard to appreciate without intimate knowledge of the quarterback position or the specific offensive scheme. There are occasionally examples of quarterbacks being known for that aspect of the position, such as Peyton Manning’s famous “Omaha” call, Aaron Rodgers’ hard-count and even Dak Prescott’s “Here we go” cadence. By and large, though, processing isn’t discussed as often as stats and highlights.
Some schemes don’t put many audibles or protection calls on the quarterback’s plate. But Smith had full command of Shane Waldron’s offense, and new coordinator Ryan Grubb has given him the same level of autonomy. According to his teammates and coaches, Smith has been proficient in that phase of the game, and he attributes that to spending more than a decade in the league and learning from veteran quarterbacks along the way.
Smith smiled when asked what he learned from former Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers, who he referred to as “Philly Cheese.”
“How to break down tape and film study and how to study tendencies of defensive coordinators,” said Smith, Rivers’ backup in 2018. “One of the things I learned from him is I listen to the defense and listen to them talk when I’m out there. Listen to their communication, watch their signals and see what they’re doing. That’ll give you a lot of tips and tells. Phil was great at that.
“He was great at recognizing Cover 0. He would throw a touchdown on Cover 0 and then go yell at the D-coordinator for calling it against him.”
Smith doesn’t spend much time barking at opposing coaches, but he does burn them for being in the wrong coverage. In Week 2, Smith saw the Patriots showing Cover 0 and checked to a different play. The Patriots responded by changing their coverage, but a miscommunication left DK Metcalf wide-open for a 56-yard touchdown.
DK Metcalf WIDE OPEN for a 56-yard TD!
📺: #SEAvsNE on FOX
📱: pic.twitter.com/nLjzMeiUub— NFL (@NFL) September 15, 2024
In Week 3, Smith and Metcalf connected on a 71-yard touchdown on a play that exploited safety Jevon Holland’s aggressiveness against dig routes in quarters coverage. While repping the play in camp, Smith instructed Metcalf to read the safety and run his route accordingly. The game Sunday was their first time revisiting the play, but it worked out how they anticipated and led to a score.
“He’s going to the line of scrimmage, he’s changing protections, he’s handling all that stuff, he’s very mechanically sound in the pocket and delivering the football, and it’s not wowing. It’s not the shiny thing at the grocery aisle,” Orlovsky said. “There’s a consistent and repetitive element to his game. I think that probably leads to people sitting at home thinking, ‘That wasn’t that impressive.’
“But when you watch the tape and you see him alert a play, handle the pressure, know what’s going on, subtle pocket movement to his left and throw a ball 25 yards downfield, between two humans that are 6 yards away from each other — and if he’s off by a foot, it’s an interception … you have a great appreciation for the difficulty of it.”
How Smith plays Monday — and, by extension, how he’s viewed — will impact the entire team. The Seahawks entered Week 4 as one of five undefeated teams, but registering one-score wins over rebuilding teams and stomping the Tua Tagovailoa-less Dolphins kept them somewhat under the radar. That will no longer be the case if the Seahawks can beat a Lions team with Super Bowl aspirations and blue-chip players on both sides of the ball, which would leave Seattle as one of three teams at 4-0.
The Seahawks want to be a team that opponents circle on their schedule, known for having the best defense and an explosive offense. The quarterback tends to be the driving force to achieve that status. In consecutive wins in Detroit the last two seasons, Smith averaged 324 passing yards and scored five total touchdowns (four passing, one rushing) with no turnovers. If he has one of those nights against a Lions team that entered Week 4 with a top-10 scoring defense, Metcalf might finally get his wish.
And if Smith is no longer labeled underrated, the Seahawks won’t be, either.
“To be able to show the world what we’re about,” Smith said, “we really look forward to that.”
(Top photo: Adam Glanzman / Getty Images)
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