By james art 
SEATTLE — In a mostly hushed Seattle Seahawks locker room, punctuated mostly by private conversations between players in small skirmishes, Geno Smith sat alone in his booth, shirtless, staring blankly into space as he processed what had just unfolded Sunday afternoon at Lumen Field.
As the starting quarterback, Smith has a mandatory postgame press conference regardless of the score. Smith knows he can’t just take a shower, turn down interview requests and walk out the back door. In his 12th NFL season and third as Seattle’s starter, Smith is no stranger to this routine.
But there was something different about the postgame scene Sunday, as if the 34-year-old quarterback knew that explaining what happened in the Seahawks’ 26-20 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Rams would be unlike any of his other media appearances. sessions.
It was. Smith took the podium for the first time and began with an apology to his teammates, the city of Seattle and the Seahawks organization.
“They have a lot of confidence in my decision-making and when they put the ball in my hands, when my teammates play the way they did today and give us a chance to win the game, I have to make sure we do,” Smith said. “The things I did today, the mistakes I made, it affected us negatively and really cost us the game today. I know how much this will hurt. I’m going to step it up though.’
Here’s the opening postgame press conference from Geno Smith apologizing to his teammates, the city of Seattle and the organization for the mistakes he made today that he says cost the Seahawks the game pic.twitter.com/I0zrrjXbl2
— Dugar, Michael-Sean (@MikeDugar) November 4, 2024
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A few minutes later, while explaining his third interception and saying he needed to play better, Smith said, “I’m not saying it just to say it. I really know I can be better.”
That part stood out because Smith’s promise to be better and the claim that he hasn’t played well enough to get the job done isn’t uncommon. Clarifying that he’s not just spewing quarterback-speak felt like an acknowledgment that he’s done it in the past. But on Sunday, Smith looked like a man who genuinely believed — perhaps for the first time as their starter — that he was the main reason the Seahawks lost the game.
“If I do my job and I don’t have those turnovers, I don’t have that pick-six — that’s a 14-point swing right there — we win that game, in my opinion,” Smith said. “When that’s the case, I look directly at myself. I look in the mirror and say, “What should I do?” And I know what I have to do. So I have to correct it.
Smith completed 21 of 34 passes for 363 yards and three touchdowns, but was intercepted three times and one of those was returned 103 yards for a score to give the Rams a 20-13 lead with 10:59 left in the fourth quarter. Smith was tackled and hit while trying to throw the ball out of the back of the end zone on first-and-goal from the 6, causing a huge fumble in a game Seattle lost by six points.
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It was Smith’s 44th regular-season start for Seattle and the first time he had three starts. This is only the second time he has bowled a six; the other occurred in Week 9 of 2022 against Arizona. In that game, Smith responded by leading three straight game-winning touchdown drives.
On Sunday, Smith’s pick-six was followed by his third interception while attempting a pass to tight end AJ Barner on second-and-goal from the 4. Barner was grabbed by a linebacker on the play, which threw off the clock, but Smith said that this is no excuse for his decision. Barner also took the blame.
“At the end of the day, I just have to play that contact,” Barner said. “This one is for me.”
Smith went back to the quarterback talk by the end of his press conference. He said center Connor Williams is doing a “great job” despite obvious evidence to the contrary and pointed the finger at himself when asked why the team is 4-5 after a 3-0 start.
“There are a lot of different contributors,” Smith said. “To be honest, I could have played better and I could have adjusted a lot of things. That’s the quarterback’s job to overcome and ultimately win.”
It’s Smith’s job to overcome adversity, but the fact that he has to do so so often due to flaws among his supporting cast makes it fair to question whether he’s real problem as Seattle enters its 10th week.
When asked to evaluate Smith’s performance Sunday, head coach Mike McDonald went elsewhere.
“He made some big plays for us,” McDonald said of Smith, who led two touchdown drives to end the first half and another to tie the game late in regulation. “It’s not easy. I didn’t have much time there. They had a good contingency plan. We need to protect him better.
MacDonald said Smith needs to make “smarter decisions” when calling for interceptions and then added, “We’ve got to finish drives. We have to take care of football.”
McDonald usually waits to watch film before giving a negative assessment of an offensive line, and it’s probably no coincidence that he started his answer to a question about Smith by talking about the defense. Smith was sacked seven times, matching the career high set in the Week 5 loss to the Giants. He was pressured on 37.2 percent of his downs (all stats courtesy of TruMedia).
Smith ranks fifth in the NFL in pressures, but has an average pressure-to-sack ratio. Smith was hit 61 times; only three quarterbacks have been hit more often: Deshaun Watson, Daniel Jones and C.J. Stroud.
Smith and Stroud have similar statistical profiles this year while facing similar adversity. Seahawks rank second in offensive penalties; the Texans are third (Seattle also ranks second in the EPA penalty, trailing only the Browns). Stroud ranks sixth in pressure rating, one spot behind Smith. Stroud’s left tackle leads the league in penalties; Smith’s right guard is fifth. Both have interior linemen among the league leaders at their position in sacks allowed and pressure rate.
When the difficulty level is high due to penalties and poor pass protection — not to mention playing without a WR1, as Smith (DK Metcalf) and Stroud (Nico Collins) did — good quarterbacks can look pedestrian and end up costing games to their teams.
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— Dugar, Michael-Sean (@MikeDugar) November 4, 2024
Smith has set enough bar to earn the benefit of the doubt. His performance Sunday didn’t crack his top 10 worst by any relevant raw or advanced statistical measure despite a career-high turnover total that speaks to how many other big plays he’s made.
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Smith’s use of a tough count set up multiple free plays that led to explosive passes, including a 30-yard touchdown run by Tyler Lockett and a 46-yard reception by Jackson Smith-Nigba, both late in the second quarter. Smith accounted for 86 rushing yards and the game-tying score on the final drive of regulation, including a 29-yard fade slot to Smith-Njigba on fourth-and-5. Smith’s only overtime drop was a 31-yard pass to Smith-Njigba, that put Seattle in scoring position, which also came on a free play after Smith’s cadence set up Kobe Turner in an ambush.
There is enough evidence to believe that Smith will play better than he did on Sunday, even if the circumstances around him don’t improve much.
Smith-Njigba had a career-high 180 yards and two scores, but also one of Smith’s interceptions bounced off his hands. The second-year wideout said he has “full confidence” Smith will recover and lead a game-tying game after those three turnovers because “he’s done it over and over and over.”
“I know if we give him time, run the right routes, do what we need to do, he’s going to put the ball where he needs to be, and that’s all we can do,” Smith-Nigba said. “We have full confidence when we go out there. We just have to stop beating ourselves up, honestly.”
Smith-Njigba said Seattle needs to move on and figure out what its problem is. He also said the problem was obvious.
“I don’t think it’s hard to see,” Smith-Njigba said. “We execute and return to our tasks.”
If Smith deserved the benefit of the doubt, it didn’t apply to Seattle’s offensive line, which had better blocking on the day than it had in the past before being shut out on a pair of short-yardage plays in overtime. But even on a good day, Ken Walker III entered overtime with 60 yards on 19 carries. He finished with 83 yards, his second-highest total of the year, but at 3.3 yards per attempt. Seattle ranks 29th in run-carry success.
Blocking aside, Williams continues to have trouble snapping the ball, and other members of the team have consistently denied big plays with penalties and put the offense behind the sticks with false start flags. On Sunday, Smith-Nigba gained 78 yards receiving due to a hold on right tackle Mike Jerrell, who was also flagged for a false start right after the second hold.
McDonald said evaluating the offensive line will be a “big part” of Seattle’s evaluation process during the bye week.
“We may not be there yet,” said MacDonald, who later added, “It’s fair to say that in all three phases right now, everything is on the table for adjustments, things that we need to move and shake up .”
Smith is not excluded from this assessment. But with just one reliable offensive lineman and an inconsistent supporting cast, it’s hard to say he’s the main source of Seattle’s struggles through nine weeks.
(Photo: Rio Giancarlo/Getty Images)
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