Trading Geno Smith could prove difficult for Seahawks

The Quarterback Carousel doesn't have many scheduled stops next year

The topic of trading Geno Smith came up several times in this week’s Seaside Joe Q&A and contrary to what I believed yesterday, there just may not be many interested teams because there don’t seem to be many teams that will even be looking. The teams that do make a change will most likely be doing so in order to go in a different direction than a player who is only one Matthew Stafford away from being the oldest starting quarterback in the NFC, if not soon the NFL.

Grant Alden: If Sam Darnold is the only real starter scheduled for free agency and only 2 Quarterbacks have round one grades, does that mean Geno has inflated trade value? Not advocating this, but what might we get in a sign & trade scenario?

Anonymous: Are there any teams that would trade for Geno?

My read on the 2025 quarterback carousel is that there is a high amount of variance for how many actual openings there will be and there are only two that everybody is sure of:

• Raiders

• Giants

Those teams currently hold the first two picks of the draft, so if anyone is going to over-draft Shedeur Sanders and Cam Ward, you can almost guarantee it will be them. Though teams could view Geno as a good bridge quarterback, they’re also not usually looking for bridge quarterbacks to top-2 picks…even if they should.

The fact that the 2025 quarterback class doesn’t appear to offer much could compel teams to begrudgingly stick with the quarterback they already have under contract. The only three notable VETERAN change-ups this year were Russell Wilson, Kirk Cousins, and Darnold, and it’s looking like that could be the case again:

• Of the seven teams with double-digit losses other than the Giants and Raiders, three have recently-drafted players (Bears, Patriots, Panthers), two are contractually binded to someone (Browns, Jaguars), one is Aaron Rodgers and the other is the Titans.

If Rodgers returns to the Jets, Cousins goes to the Titans, and the Steelers and Vikings re-sign their vets, there are now potentially no openings left. If Darnold leaves Minnesota, that’s another job gone because the Vikings drafted a replacement already.

Without retirements, I don’t see any other openings. Even if the Saints cut Derek Carr or the Dolphins traded Tua, it would not be because they wanted to create a job for Geno Smith. It wouldn’t make sense to eat $50 million in salary cap just to take another $15 or $25 million for a player of a similar value. That’s like paying Geno $75 million to be your starter.

I think the NFL has a bare minimum of 23 starting jobs locked down in 2025 already, and if we’re not being dramatic the real number is probably closer to 28, and the Seahawks can’t trade Geno to themselves, so that only leaves three maybes:

• Colts, if they want a better passer than Richardson

• Browns, if they can find a way to dump Watson

• Titans

This isn’t even knowing if any of those three teams a) Will have an opening, b) Will have an opening that makes sense for Geno, c) Will want Geno, d) Won’t just decide to draft somebody or sign someone much cheaper.

The Titans and Browns will have top-10 picks and the Colts aren’t that far away from the top-10. Plus, there are at least 10 veteran free agents who no fan is going to believe would make a good starter, but who are also more attractive options now than Geno was as a 2022 free agent or Darnold as a 2024 free agent.

And they will be cheaper than Geno.

Geno has a $10 million roster bonus and Seattle would presumably have to pay that before trading him, but then he is relatively inexpensive at $14.8 million. That’s still at least $10 million more than Daniel Jones or Mac Jones and as ludicrous as that sounds today, we’re really only talking about teams that are just trying to tread water for a year, not win the Super Bowl.

That’s exactly what the Raiders did by signing Gardner Minshew. Teams sucking air at the bottom of the standings don’t want Geno for $15 million.

In the beginning, I thought I was going to say there are a lot of teams. But now I’d say there’s a low probability of Seattle being able to negotiate a bidding war for Geno on the trade market. Their options would be to:

• Keep him ($25 million in cash, $38 million cap hit)

• Release him ($25 million savings)

• Extend him

• Trade him

Trading him is by far the least likely because it requires a team to trade for him, and it means that Seattle probably has to pay him $10 million just to get back something like a fourth round pick.

It is very unlike the Seahawks to go out and get a quarterback of note, so staying the course and then adding to the room through free agency and the draft, similar to 2012, feels more and more realistic.

Paul Johnson: A couple years ago the 49ers had a seismic shift at QB elevating Mr Irrelevant to QB1. Could John Rhys Plumlee be the Brock Purdy of the hawks?

Yes, and the drones could be aliens.

Just joking around, but generally no, fans shouldn’t get their hopes up for players like Plumlee. If Plumlee was on any of the other 31 teams, would any Seahawks fans know who he is? Can Seahawks fans name the practice squad QB that was here just last year*?

I think Plumlee would be more of a Taysom Hill than a Brock Purdy. Purdy was a good college passer, at a major college program, with a ton of experience. He had over 200 more completions in college than Plumlee had attempts. I don’t expect Plumlee to be in Seattle for a long time.

*Holton Ahlers

Andrew: I think it is really hard to be worth more than $20M as a player, full stop. If a team needs to divide the salary between 65 players to make it through a season, and the cap is $260M, then the average player gets $4M. If you give $20M to one player now that 15M comes from dropping 4 other players to 3M below average. Just because a player is at a really important position doesn't mean the rest of the team can go by the wayside. I believe most players making over $20M are overpaid, because in a group of world class athlete's that is the NFL, being 4-5X better than the "average" player is almost impossible.

Then the question becomes is DK worth being one of the 3 players who can more than 10% of the cap? My personal answer to that question is no, and I think if you extend that to QB's I think it can help explain for teambuilding why allocating one of those spots to your QB isn't always the clearest path to a winning roster.

To help demonstrate a 10% player, here are the players set to make over 10% of Seattle’s 2025 (projected) cap:

• Geno Smith, 13.7%

• Tyler Lockett, 11%

• DK Metcalf, 11.3%

• Leonard Williams, 10.4%

And then there’s Dre’Mont Jones at 9.1% and Uchenna Nwosu at 7.6%. Lockett, Jones, and Nwosu are cap casualty candidates, while Geno and DK’s situations have been discussed. Williams could be restructured to bring his cap number down by over $9 million, which is a reasonable expectation.

Actually, the Seahawks may not have a 10% player next season.

John DeLorie: I agree with MUCH of what has been said EXCEPT wanting to fire Grubb. Grubb has extremely high pedigree and he has been cursed with an o-line that doesn't block well. This is Grubb's 1st year at this level. All NFL rookies say that the hardest adjustment going from college to pro, is the speed of the game. We are seeing steady improvement in spite of injuries, sudden retirement, and playing rookies and essentially 2 second-year men.

I wasn’t sure if you were referring to me as someone who suggested to fire Grubb, but I’ve been doing as much as I can to preach patience with the new coaching staff, especially Grubb. If I refer to other people who bring up firing Grubb and Jay Harbaugh, it is not an endorsement but an acknowledgment of their existence and their right to that opinion.

Coordinators and assistant coaches and people who generally don’t have as many fans as quarterbacks and head coaches tend to get the worst of it when a team is struggling.

Joe Brady was Carolina’s scapegoat as the Panthers offensive coordinator in 2020-2021, now he’s being talked about as a top head coach candidate.

Think that has something to do with being Josh Allen’s offensive coordinator?

We could all agree in 2-3 years that Grubb turned out to be a bad NFL offensive coordinator or a good one, but that doesn’t make him responsible for who is on the roster or what John Schneider and Mike Macdonald are asking him to do with these players in 2024.

La’au: They are who they have been all year. The Arizona game gave people false hope. Geno will not win a Super Bowl. Red zone interceptions kill teams, and Geno haters will remain until that stops. Hint: it won't stop

The offensive line is trash, has been trash, and will continue to be trash with the players we have. The Cardinal game was an anomaly to this season. Most games have been just like the Green Bay game—horrible line play. Nothing has changed, and this team will be horrible against any team that has a pass rush. Seven sacks is not the winning recipe and will never be the winning recipe.

Pete Carroll alluded to the idea that he was fired because ownership was too invested in caring what the fans say on social media, etc.. Well, if that’s true, then I think it will show up in how John Schneider approaches the offensive line in 2025. Will the Seahawks spend more money on a guard than they ever have before or draft a center earlier than they ever have since Chris Spencer? Or both?

If nothing else, I think the Seahawks might do something there just to appease the fans and while I don’t know if that’s the right process, it could produce better results.

Seaside Joe 2121