The best game of Week 3 was one you probably didn’t watch. And maybe if everyone was watching, more people would be drawing conclusions from Seahawks-Lions the way they would if this were the Chiefs and Bills or the Rams and 49ers.
So here’s one for the people who missed this particular showdown in Motown—. And I’m not just saying he’s pretty good relative to what you think. He’s a pretty good quarterback, period, and he’s backing up the decision his coach made a month ago to go with him, regardless of who thought it was a head-scratcher at the time.
Pete Carroll’s reward for it Sunday was a quarterback who completed 77% of his passes for 320 yards, two touchdowns, no picks, a 132.6 passer rating and a staggering 10.67 yards per attempt. Oh, and Smith kept the Seahawks swinging in a scintillating 48–45 win over a Lions team that didn’t quit to keep Seattle within a half game of the NFC West lead.
And after all, we can also introduce you to the one guy who’s not surprised. That would be, yup, Geno Smith.
“I mean to be honest, I’ve been playing like this for a while,” Smith said from the victorious locker room. “It just doesn’t get recognized by you guys for some reason. But with the offense that I’ve inherited, man, we have playmakers everywhere. And these guys are playing great; they play hard. They’re some of the best players at their position in the league. We drafted two amazing tackles, we signed a first-class center who’s done a heck of a job, our running game is coming along.
“Obviously, we have to continue to build in all areas, but we’re getting better.”
So I asked Smith what we’ve all missed. He mentioned he had a perfect passer rating in his last game for the Jets. He wasn’t lying—he was 20-of-25 for 358 yards and three scores on Dec. 28, 2014, against Miami. He said he’s played well when given the chance since then, and he wasn’t really b.s.’ing there, either. His passer rating in two games, and one start, with the Giants was 84.5; with the Seahawks, over eight games and six starts, it’s 101.8. And how about this: Smith is completing 77.3% of his passes, the highest completion percentage by any quarterback with a minimum of 125 attempts through a team’s first four games of a season, according to ESPN Stats & Information.
That’s why when I asked whether he thinks this sort of play has been sitting there inside of him the past seven-plus years since the Jets jettisoned him in 2015, he didn’t skip a beat.
“It has been,” he said, “for sure.”
It definitely showed up in Detroit, and from the start. Smith was 9-of-10 for 119 yards and a touchdown in the first quarter, 3-of-4 for 51 yards and a score in the second quarter, 6-of-8 for 72 yards in the third quarter, and 5-of-8 for 78 yards in the fourth quarter. And that consistency is why the Seahawks were able to keep answering the Lions.
The Seahawks never punted Sunday; the Lions did just twice. The game’s last seven drives covering the game’s final 26:04: Seahawks missed field goal, Lions touchdown, Seahawks touchdown, Lions touchdown, Seahawks field goal, Lions touchdown, Seahawks touchdown. Jamaal Williams’s 51-yard touchdown run was answered with Rashaad Penny’s 36-yard touchdown run. Jared Goff’s 81-yard catch-and-run connection with T.J. Hockenson was answered with a Smith bomb to Tyler Lockett for 34 yards. And so on.
Goff played really well. Smith was better.
“It was kind of like that last week, where we got into the second half, and we just couldn’t finish drives in the red zone,” Smith said. “We had moved the ball and we just got field goals and couldn’t finish in the red zone. So coming into this week, a big emphasis of it was just really starting fast and then finishing strong and finishing with touchdowns in the red zone. And obviously the game was back-and-forth, and we had to continue to score. But no matter what, that was our mentality coming in, that we’ve got to finish better in the second half.”
Smith added that it reminded him of his first game in the Big 12, almost a decade ago exactly, after West Virginia moved over from the Big East—it was Sept. 29, 2012, when the Mountaineers beat Baylor, 70–63, and the then senior quarterback threw for 656 yards and eight touchdowns. And he said that, yes, that kind of game is “ fun.”
And what was the most fun about Sunday’s game? “The best part is that we got to see some run checks, and we were able to catch them in zero,” Smith said, citing the Penny 36-yarder as one where he changed the call at the line to take advantage of the Lions’ blitz call. It was rewarding, he continued, because of the work he and his teammates did to be able to communicate in a hostile environment, and silence the crowd with a big play.
Of course, there was no shortage of big plays on a day in which 1,075 yards from scrimmage were compiled between the two teams.
That said, for Smith, and the Seahawks, the best yards were the toughest ones to get—right at the end of the game, when Penny got the ball on three consecutive snaps, when Detroit knew it was coming, and Penny picked up 12 yards to sap the Lions of their three timeouts and set up two Smith kneel-downs to put the win away.
“That’s our standard, man. That’s our standard,” Smith said. “That’s the type of football we want to play. You talk about four-minute offense, and they know we’re going to run the ball. And everybody in the stadium knows the ball is going to get run, but we have to be able to be tough enough and sound enough and block well enough and run well enough to pick up those first downs that end the game and not put our defense back on the field; that’s our standard.”
The Seahawks lived up to it Sunday with a 31-year-old quarterback who’s been a kind of quiet revelation early this year for those paying attention.
Of course, a good month is just a good month. And that goes for a whole team that also might be a little better than everyone thinks.
“I think as the season continues, it’s up to us to prove that,” Smith said. “I can’t say that right now. We’re 2–2. I felt like we could’ve won the last game, too, but if we feel like we’re better than people realize, it’s on us to go out there and prove it on Sundays. That’s really it. Nothing else matters; nothing we say matters. It’s about how we execute when it’s game time.”
Smith has proven at least a little something thus far. The Seahawks have, too.
