When will everyone get it about Geno?

I suggest everyone buy NFL Rewind access pass for whatever it is, like $60 for a year, and if you REALLY think Geno Smith is a good player or destined to be a good player, go back and watch his game tape from the previous three years. You tend not to fault him with the hefty turnovers his rookie year because it was expected to happen.

If people remember correctly I did game by game analysis' of Geno for a couple weeks at the beginning of last season breaking down every throw in each game he made. I've watched and re-watched his games multiple times.

Please note, that this is not at all to blame the loss on him. He probably played well enough to keep us in the game. But his problems were completely exposed to the point where everyone should now know that he is not a starting calibre quarterback in the NFL. Not on a team with any hopes.

This thread is speaking to Geno as a whole, not just this game. But this game is the perfect microcosm for how his career is going to go.

"Positives"
- Strong arm... Yada yada yada. He can make all the throws, and all of that nonsense. It doesn't do a quarterback much good if he has shitty touch. But we'll give him a nod for having an above average NFL arm. He throws absolute lasers over the middle, and has pretty good accuracy in the middle of the field.

- Intermediate throwing. While he doesn't make great decisions, he does have the ability to pick up big chunk plays if he happens to make the read on any given play. He throws very well if he read the defense right to that 11-20 yard range.

- Great athlete. Funny hearing people criticize Fitz for not sliding when Geno got absolutely SMACKED as the only healthy active quarterback on the roster. That would've been a fun adventure lining Brandon Marshall up at quarterback if he got hurt on that play. He truly is a gifted athlete though. He has a second gear when he's running.

- He is tough as nails. He eats big hits, and while he takes a lot of hits because of his poor feel for pocket, he took a lot of big shots to his ribs today. I'll never criticize his toughness. The guy can take a hit.

What will prevent him from EVER being a good NFL quarterback
- Field awareness. Game awareness. Game management. Situational awareness for christs sake. I don't really understand why anyone needs to spell this bullshit out, but here we go. On TWO separate occasions in a two score game where the clock is working against us, Geno took huge sacks out of the pocket and then displayed no urgency in getting the offense back to the line. The clock is plastered all over NFL stadiums for quarterbacks to see. It'd still be a terrible play if he ran out of bounds on both those occasions, but at least we'd stop the clock. He had at least 3 seconds on both plays to flip the ball out of bounds.

Everyone likes to use the 'game manager' moniker with negative connotation as if all of the elite quarterbacks around the league aren't game managers first and foremost. The Alex Smith's of the world get a terrible rap for making the right decision in a bad situation like the aforementioned scenario of saving the clock and yardage on a sack.

It is not something that can be taken lightly. If the quarterback is constantly screwing up these scenarios at the end of the game you have absolutely no chance of not only winning games, let alone coming back from a deficit when your defense is playing a shit game. It's little things like that that allow a 'game manager' like Alex Smith to hang around the league for 15 years and puts the ultra physically talented Geno Smith out of the league in five years because no one wants to bring a quarterback in off the bench that has no idea how to play situational football.

This was also very obvious at the end of the half when we had a 3rd and 5 on lets say the 30 with 45 seconds and two timeouts and he forced the ball into double coverage in the end zone to Brandon Marshall like we needed to score on that play. I chalk that up also to bad playcalling, but something tells me the play was not designed to go to the end zone on that play especially in double coverage. Because of his above average physical talent he almost made the throw.

That play and his interception were both similar to a hitter in baseball swinging for the fences with no one on in a 6 run game. His interception to Woodson looked like he was trying to overcome a two or three score game on one throw. He had off man coverage with a safety over the top, and he throws the deep ball. Terrible pre-snap read.

- Pocket awareness. It doesn't exist for Geno. NFL quarterbacks need to have a sixth sense in being able to have at least somewhat of a feel for where the rushers are. Some of this could go back to the fact that he usually reads the defense wrong so he has absolutely no idea how many blitzers are coming at him on a given play. He does not slide in the pocket well at all. He does not know where the rushers are. Our offensive line is pretty good at funneling the rushers around so that the quarterback can slide into their passing lanes. Sacks and quarterback hits can be as much as a quarterback issue as it is an offensive line issue. There's a reason Fitzpatrick had only been sacked what 5 times all year? He moves in the pocket well.

Geno also has terrible footwork. He doesn't step and follow through on his throws, which is why they tend to sail on him.

- He holds onto the ball for an eternity. Why? Is no one open? He doesn't have the excuse of having no talent at receiver anymore that everyone liked to try to blame his deficiencies on. He holds onto the ball forever because he doesn't read the defenses correctly in the pre-snap. He often throws late to receivers because he does not seem to know what coverage the defense is in, or where defenders are going to be. He has become very conscious of not turning the ball over, which in some cases can be a good thing. It's not a good thing for him because he relentlessly eats sacks. The Raiders sent a double A-gap blitz on him late in the game (which Colon held on anyway so it might be a moot point), and if he stands in there and steps into his throw, albeit taking a big hit, he'll deliver a better ball. Instead, he backpedaled and threw a dirt ball on a crucial play. His footwork is horrendous when he's blitzed.

- He still doesn't use his eyes at all. He locks onto a receiver and god damnit he's throwing it if there's six guys surrounding the receiver. That's why his passes are generally telegraphed. It again comes back to his poor reads, and maybe not having trust if he looks the safety off, that the defense is going to look the same when he comes back to his target. If he had a better feel for pre-snap reads then he'd be able to look a safety off and still be able to come back to his receiver knowing where the defenders are.

- The team has no confidence in him. It speaks to his personality and his poor leadership qualities, and it seems more and more like the IK locker room incident spoke volumes to this. While it may have happened really quickly, I'm sure there was tension between the two. and players can feel that in a locker room. We played a shit game all around, but the team seemed incredibly deflated as soon as that happened.

- Bad touch. He puts too much air under the ball or not enough. He pops up his deep ball like a deep flyout in Coors Field, and he throws low liners. Brees has made a Hall of Fame career with his touch on the ball. Get it over the linebackers, but don't throw into the safeties.

Feel free to rip this apart if you're a Geno fan boy. It's not an insult to say that you are not a starting NFL quarterback. It's the hardest position in all of sports. But some of you need to be realistic about what you watch. His stats look pretty good on paper but you have to watch and analyze the game as it's being played. I was pretty positive about him as a developing player, but the problem is that most of these things are not something that is learned with experience.

 

I guess you didn't exactly read the bolded parts of my post in which I indicated I was not pinning the loss on him.

A pretty good defense? They have the worst pass defense in the NFL, ranked 32nd coming into this game, and garbage across the board at all secondary positions that aren't manned by Charles Woodson, a run stopping middle linebacker and a bunch of rush outside linebackers.

What makes you think that Geno is better equipped than Fitzpatrick to compete in a shootout style of game? Because he throws the ball harder over the middle? Because he can throw deeper interceptions?

I'm not being pessimistic. I'm being realistic about Geno and our quarterback situation moving forward. Fitzpatrick will be on the team next year barring some type of game breaking deal for Brees or another good quarterback in the offseason, and Geno will be cut. He did not play a quality game, despite finishing with decent numbers.

It's not about making mistakes. It's the type of mistakes he made. Taking sacks out of the pocket 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage is absolutely terrible no matter how you want to spin it. This isn't the first time he's done it either. Have you seen Cassel do it? Weeden? Landry Jones? Mettenberger? There is no excuse for it, despite the fact that you seem to want to make excuses for him. It's not a play NFL quarterbacks should make and they were both critically negative plays that killed drives in a game where we needed every yard to fight back.

It was stupid to punt. But after Bowles saw Geno take that sack, he probably said fuck it, this guys a moron hopefully we can get a fumble recovery touchdown or something.

 

The only reason Petty shouldn't play would be to try to save his confidence for when he's truly ready. We'll see how Geno fairs. The Bills are going to crush him, I'm confident of that. He could slide by Jacksonville, although they do have a couple of good interior rushers lead by Sen'Derrick Marks.

We're stuck with Geno if Fitzpatrick's thumb injury is something serious though. Even if you make a deal for a backup quarterback at this point that isn't Josh Johnson or Matt Flynn, they'll need at minimum two-three weeks to learn the offense and even still it'll be a condensed playbook.