Positives
- Can throw deep sideline routes.
- Effective in rhythm after play action.
- Can make back-shoulder throws and other difficult passes.
- Versed in several offensive schemes.
Negatives
- Holds the ball too long/lacks a feel for the pass rush.
- Heaves the ball up for grabs at times.
- Mistakes seem to snowball on him.
- Appears to rub some people the wrong way.
Extensive tape study and investigation has revealed exactly who Geno Smith is. Before we reveal who he is, however, we need to machete through all the discussion of who he is not.
The Flaming Bag Scouting Report. The bar for Smith discussion was set last week by
Pro Football Weeklys draft editor, a fellow by the name of Narwangry.
Narwangry wrote that Smith is Not a student of the game. Nonchalant field presence does not command respect from teammates and cannot inspire. Mild practice demeanor no urgency. Not committed or focused marginal work ethic. Interviewed poorly at the Combine and did not show an understanding of concepts on the white board. Opted not to compete at the Senior Bowl and has approached offseason training as if he has already arrived and it shows in his body with minimal muscle definition or strength.
Narwangry took similar aim at Cam Newton two years ago, going so far as to accuse him of having a fake smile. Before we start flinging race cards around like Gambit from the X-Men, it should be noted that Narwangry has also taken his butcher knife to the likes of Jimmy Clausen. He may be a little tone-deaf when it comes to racial semiotics (he accuses Smith of not liking cold weather at one point), but he has a long history of bipolar attitudes toward quarterbacks of all races once he gets a head of steam going. Quarterbacks Narwangry really likes can will their teams to victory using pure leader sauce, while those he doesnt like are written about like Adeles ex-boyfriends.
Narwangrys latest rant prompted hostile responses from sources as esteemed as ESPNs
First Take (the thing was basically chum for their barrier reef) and as sundry as the greater draft blog-o-verse. Most of us leapt to Smiths defense, and we may have overcompensated a little bit. Experts like West Virginia quarterbacks coach Jake Spavital
were quoted as saying Ive never seen anybody study harder with the tape than he has. No one knows Smith quite as well as Spavital, except maybe Smiths mom, who is also about as likely as his former coach (a 27-year old who has not had many opportunities to see quarterbacks study) to say something inflammatory about him before the draft.
Smith appeared on Jon Grudens ESPN program, diagramming a play on the white board for the world to see. That settled it. SMITH CAN DIAGRAM PLAYS FROM HIS OWN PLAYBOOK THAT CLEARLY MEANS HE IS ARISTOTLE AND ALL QUESTIONS ABOUT HIS FOOTBALL KNOWLEDGE AND WORK HABITS ARE ANSWERED. Narwangry brought this reaction on himself, but again, we must be wary of countering one false judgment with another. Smith has been an NCAA starter for three years; did we really expect him to accidently shove the dry erase marker up his own nose? Gruden called Smith smart, but Narwangry never said he wasnt smart, simply a bad student. (Take it from a former teacher: many smart kids are awful students). Gruden pointed out that Smith had to make lots of decisions in West Virginias offense. Thats true, and he spent most of last November making bad ones. Gruden went on to praise Ryan Nassib a few days later for going 3-0 in head-to-head games against Smith; this quarterback draft class looks nothing like last years, until we start amping up the coverage volume.
Boy, we have gone far done the rabbit hole of unnamed sources and opinions about opinions about opinions, havent we? It boils down to this: Narwangry, like most of us, has sources. A source is essentially a second-hand opinion, and it must be treated as such, especially when it is anonymous. Sources can be resentful, biased, or flat-out wrong, just as they can be defensive or evasive. A source willing to deliver juice, particularly when speaking off the record, must be treated with the most skepticism: this is someone with either an agenda or an inflated opinion of their own opinions. Narwangry consistently fails to apply this skepticism to whoever feeds him the rage peppers about quarterback personalities. Thats a bad habit, and it casts the wrong attention on an otherwise invaluable draft publication.
My gut, my research, and my sources tell me Smith rubs some people the wrong way. Jay Cutler does the same thing. The young Jim Kelly did the same thing. Its an attribute that may have soured some Combine interviews. It could conceivably become a locker-room issue, but so could just about anything, because you cannot please 50 men all of the time. Tiki Barber once said Eli Manning couldnt inspire his teammates, and look where it got each of them. We should always be attentive to whispers about a players intangibles, but we are never obligated to believe them, and you have to be crazy to pass them along, unqualified, verbatim.
An Actual Scouting Report. Now that we have covered all of that, just who is Geno Smith?
Smith is a terrific athlete. He has plenty of arm talent: he can get the ball deep, fire fastballs to the sideline, and make the tricky pinpoint throws NFL quarterbacks need to make. Smith is fast and elusive. He did not run all that much at West Virginia, though they often used Pistol formations and read-option principles, but he was effective in spot duty as a ball-carrier and could make big plays when flushed from the pocket.
(Not to keep pummeling
Pro Football Weekly, but one other quick aside. Their magazine preview refers to the Mountaineers system as a gimmick offense. Either the writer of that report watched no West Virginia football or watched no college football whatsoever since 1997 before sitting down to watch West Virginia football, and also missed the NFL playoffs in their entirety. They run lots of spread-option, Pistol option, and empty backfield stuff. Its about as gimmicky as using a web browser.)
Smith was most effective when he could operate in rhythm. Read the defense, take snap, short drop, throw. Or, read, snap, play-fake to a running back, pull the ball, fire the ball. When everything happens in rhythm, Smith has pinpoint accuracy and timing, hitting receivers in stride so they can pick up yards after the catch. Smith also delivers accurate deep passes when working within the timing of the offense.
Trouble sets in when Smith holds the ball too long, which happens too often. Smith doesnt have a great feel for the pass rush, and he has a knack for getting sacked near his own goal line. He was responsible for two safeties in the Pinstripe Bowl (a sack and intentional grounding), and he fumbled near his own goal line zone against Oklahoma. Smiths ball security in a collapsing pocket is also a problem: a quarterback who hesitates too long and does not take care of the ball is going to lose it, often.
It is not hard to find terrible decisions and baffling throws when sorting through the game tape from Smiths losing streak. Smith threw corner routes with safeties waiting on them, fired passes into double coverage, and battled through whole series in which every pass was off target. To his credit, he kept attacking even when nothing went right, like a basketball guard trying to shoot his way out of a slump. Against Oklahoma, he fumbled at the goal line, threw two interceptions, and threw two other quails that defenders dropped, but he kept West Virginia in the game until the final play (this at the tail end of an ugly losing streak) by following every mistake with a big-time throw. Still, there is a whole month of mistakes to account for. The corner route against zone coverage gave Smith constant trouble (see the Kansas State game if you dare): he sometimes appears to be in denial about the fact that a cornerback or safety can quickly converge on the ball if the pass is thrown too late.
Before the losing streak, Smith went seven games without an interception and looked invincible at times. Did defenses figure him out? Was he pressing? Did the West Virginia offense become too predictable when running back Shawne Alston was unavailable and the coaches grew too fond of endless tunnel screens? All three factors contributed to the losing streak, but Smiths tendency to pile up bad decisions when things are not clicking cannot simply be written off.
Conclusion: Take away the character assassinations and sometimes over-charitable rebuttals, and we are left with another riddle of a quarterback in a class full of riddles. Smith is breathtaking at times and infuriating at others. Give him the ball, and something will happen, either awesome or terrible. Hes a great athlete who is sometimes too confident in his own athleticism. He can make four straight bonehead plays, then come back to save the game (or come close) with two perfect touchdown passes, acting as if nothing bad had happened before that. His smooth, snappy timing passes can pick a defense apart, but he is susceptible to sudden downshifts onto the blooper reel. Many love him, but some feel compelled to hate him, and there are questions about his work habits, though he never went to Cabo with a foxy paramour before an important game
Thats it! Geno Smith is Tony Romo! The streaks, the lapses, the rhythm passes, the highlights, the head-scratchers, the athleticism, the polarization. Hes Romo, and he takes too much blame when things go wrong for his team, even though he deserves some of that blame. He can develop into a quarterback who wins five or six games per year for his team all by himself, then loses about two or three all by himself, then plays at a fairly high level in the other eight. Like Romos Cowboys, that can result in 13-3 seasons or 6-10 seasons, depending on who is surrounding him.
Romo is a good quarterback, often a great one. Is he a student of the game? It depends on who you talk to, when you talked to them, and what they felt like telling you. For Romo, that sort of talk is irrelevant now. Someday, it will be for Smith, too.