After making a push for a Seahawks extension last year and not receiving it, Geno Smith admitted he felt out of place in Seattle. The three-year starter also played for a coaching staff that did not bring him in; that proved to be a significant factor regarding Smith’s 2024 approach and his long-term future in the Pacific Northwest.
Previously mentioned as having talked to Pete Carroll during his final Seahawks season, Smith discussed contract frustration with his former HC. This was an interesting strategy, seeing as Carroll held final roster say when Smith had signed his three-year, $75MM deal in 2023. But the communication between Smith and Carroll, whom the Seahawks had fired after the 2023 season, proved important.
“I was frustrated with my situation there. I was severely underpaid and thinking, ‘I should be getting the market or something close to it,’” Smith said, via SI.com’s Albert Breer. “I had talks with John Schneider, and he had talks with the higher-ups, and it just wasn’t gonna happen. And it disappointed me so much, and I didn’t know who to reach out to or to talk to. So I reached out to coach [Carroll], and he was there for me.”
Going into his third season as Seattle’s starter, Smith pushed for an offseason raise. With two years left on the deal agreed to during Carroll’s final year in charge, the Seahawks rebuffed their starting QB and kept him on the $25MM-per-year contract. Smith entered last season as the NFL’s 20th-highest-paid passer.
Smith’s age hurt his chances of landing a market-value deal, though frustration surfacing in 2024 made sense due to the contracts given out last year. Middling QBs Trevor Lawrence, Jordan Love and Tua Tagovailoa had each entered the $50MM-per-year club. All three more that doubled Smith in AAV. Smith’s Seahawks deal was also well south of the contracts Daniel Jones and Derek Carr were playing on at that point, and the Seattle pact morphed into a pay-as-you-go structure after 2023. But with the Seahawks controlling his rights through the 2025 season, he had little option but to play out the 2024 campaign on the lower-middle-class deal.
Carroll and Smith still texted throughout the season, Breer adds, and the QB saw the Super Bowl-winning HC’s Raiders arrival as a clear sign a reunion would commence. The Seahawks traded Smith to the Raiders for a third-round pick, with the team having offered him a deal in the ballpark of the three-year, $100.5MM proposal Sam Darnold later accepted. Schneider said the Smith negotiations did not last long, leading to the March trade pivot.
“When Carroll signed here, I knew he would be coming for me, and it was a matter of time before that happened,” Smith said, via ESPN.com’s Ryan McFadden. “The other options [I had], I kind of took them off the table. I looked at their offers, and they were decent offers, but I wanted to be with coach Carroll.”
Smith joined the Raiders after their failed Matthew Stafford trade pursuit, and after minority owner Tom Brady was believed to be uninterested in Darnold as a free agent. Rather than give strong consideration to a Carroll-Russell Wilson reunion, the Raiders made the Smith trade days before free agency. A month later, the parties agreed on a two-year, $75MM extension.
This is a markup from Smith’s Seattle terms, though it comes after the cap spiked by nearly $55MM from 2023-25. Between Smith’s 2023 Seattle contract and his 2025 Vegas agreement, a host of QB deals transpired. As a result, Smith entered this season as the NFL’s 17th-highest-paid passer. The Raiders did move him past Darnold and Baker Mayfield among the league’s middle-class QB1 sector, and Smith received far more fully guaranteed ($58.5MM) than Darnold had from the Seahawks ($37.5MM). Though, Darnold can lock in an additional $17.5MM if on the Seahawks’ roster by mid-February.
Even if Smith (35 in October) is highly unlikely to land an upper-crust QB deal, he has completed a career revival after a nomadic period as a backup. The league thought so little of him in 2019 that the Seahawks cut him to reorganize their roster that August. Although Seattle re-signed Smith soon after to back up Wilson, the team rostered him for $870K in 2019.
Smith did not join the Seahawks initially until May 2019, admitting (via McFadden) he considered retirement after his Jets stay turned into backup gigs with the Giants and Chargers. Workout partners Antonio Brown and Thaddeus Lewis were among those to talk him out of that route. That became good advice, even as Smith settled for low-end deals ($1.19MM in 2020, $1.21MM in 2021) to back up Wilson in the years that followed. Smith’s breakout 2022 season came while he was attached to a one-year, $3.5MM deal — as he needed to beat out trade pickup Drew Lock to succeed Wilson.
The Raiders are 1-2 under Smith, and the extension gives the team flexibility to continue pursuing a younger upgrade again next year. The Smith-Carroll duo represents a high-profile Raiders stopgap solution.
“I finally got my team,” Smith said, via McFadden. “I always felt like I was trying to replace Russell, and you can never replace all the great things that he did. So I never felt like Seattle was my team. Also, I didn’t feel like I fit the aesthetic of the Seattle organization. The Raiders just fit me.“
if he had a problem with his contract why did he sign it then?
Because, at that time it was a good deal. He out played the contract and Seattle refused to give him a raise.
If he had underperformed the contract, would he be willing to take a pay cut?
You sound like you’re new to this football contract thing. This has been going on for years.
If maybes and buts were candies and nuts, it’d be Christmas all year.
Most veteran starters don’t want to play out the last year of their deals, especially when the market rate at their position has skyrocketed and they’ve performed well.
LOL, Geno_Oh-no saying he was underpaid is hilarious. So, perhaps he threw all those INTs to make up for it.
Geno was not a good QB. Look at his numbers in the red zone and coming out of his end zone to the 20. He totally sucked. Most of his ints were in the red zone and his sacks were coming out. I doubt if many of you watched many if any of his games.
You can’t blame it all on the OL. They weren’t good but holding the ball way too long was not on them. Losing his cool and taking away a good play was not on them. He would lose his cool and go after his own teammates. Throwing a fit on the field and then off it. He was a poor leader and a spoiled brat. Look him up on YouTube. You should be able to find stuff I pointed out and also him looking off both DK and Lockett. Not sure the problem with Lockett was but Geno was jealous of DK and it showed. Geno can go play for an inferior team and can show he is an avg QB at best. Good riddance to you Geno no more game losing ints or drive ending dumb penalties.
As a Jets fan I was happy Geno found some success but I knew he wasnt the guy people were propping him up to be. Hes a fringe starter tier QB
Maybe he should have worried more about winning a playoff game. The Seahawks dogged it in the second half of that playoff game against SF in early 2023.