Field Gulls
It’s been an entire offseason of how much worse Seattle got because of the QB swap, but the numbers tell a different story than the talking heads.
NFL quarterbacks are subject to some of the most scrutiny in professional sports. Quarterbacks on new teams, even more so. Quarterbacks who either left playoff teams or end up with Pete Carroll in Las Vegas - well, you get the picture.
It’s no surprise Geno Smith and Sam Darnold are interesting points of conversation this offseason. And yet, the specifics of their respective conversations are...weird.
In general - in case you’ve somehow missed it - the Seattle Seahawks have been slammed for allowing Geno Smith to take off, while the media simultaneously doubts Darnold will be anywhere near as effective this season due to his inability to play under pressure.
Obviously the way the season ended for the Minnesota Vikings looks bad, but I wonder if it has drastically skewed the Darnold Perspective.
But the equation that has led to these conclusions might be altogether false.
The equation is: Seattle OL bad + Geno Smith good under pressure = average team.
Whereas: Seattle OL bad + Sam Darnold dreadfully horrible under pressure = abysmal 2025 outlook.
The “under pressure” conversation is weird because the numbers just don’t hold up.
Here is a baseline, using Smith’s past three seasons in Seattle, and Darnold’s 2024 season.
Geno Smith’s QBR: 62.8 in ‘22, to 59.5 in ‘23, to 53.8 in ‘24. A three-year decline. His Interception percentage also jumped from 1.9% to 2.6% over that span. To his credit, Smith’s Bad Throw Percentage dropped to 10.4%, impressive and the best mark of his career.
On the other hand, Sam Darnold’s 2024 QBR was 60.4, the highest of his career. We’re just going to inform you now that nearly every good number is the best of Darnold’s career and not type it every single time. His INT% was 2.2, better than Smith. His on target percentage was 77.7%, not as good as Smith’s 81.8% last year but better than Smith in 2021 or 2023.
Why choose all these accuracy, percentage and total QBR numbers?
Specifically because of the previously mentioned conversation that when Darnold is pressured he turns into a pumpkin.
Because last year Darnold was pressured on 24.5% of his dropbacks. Smith was pressured on only 21.9%, the least-pressured of his entire Seattle career. All while Darnold hit career numbers in everything and Smith just played arguably his worst season in Seattle.
If Geno does to hang his hat on something, his yards per scramble was ridiculous last year, jumping all the way up to 10.7 Y/Scr, which shattered any previous mark by either quarterback.
But again, from an accuracy under pressure perspective....
Not that different.
Recency bias because of the final two Minnesota games, including the playoff loss? Probably. It’s also probably because national media is often two or three years behind players that didn’t enter the league as a superstar. Geno...
