What to expect from Seahawks' Saturday mock scrimmage game
Seaside Bonus: A look back to last season's scrimmage and what it could tell us about tomorrow's mock game
The idea of the Bizarro Seahawks holding a competition this year between not one but two former Broncos QBOTFs sounds downright Lynchian, for lack of a worse term. But if you go back to three years ago, during Seattle’s annual mock game scrimmage, the possibility was not so far down a lost highway.
Geno Smith, fresh off a single year of supporting Philip Rivers with the L.A. Chargers, was guaranteed no such position when he signed with the Seattle Seahawks in 2019. He entered camp in a full blown competition to be the backup and the man hoping to end his career was only three years removed from hearing his name called in the first round of the NFL Draft.
A quarterback joining the Seahawks after three disappointing season with the Broncos?
There was little hope for Paxton Lynch to even win Seattle’s backup job, let alone as a starter. His first two seasons in Denver were such a disaster that the Broncos immediately announced he would be a backup to Case Keenum in 2018, then demoted him to third string, then cut him to sign a different third-string quarterback.
It’s bad when you’re third. It’s bad when you get released. But it’s the worst when it wasn’t just to save a roster spot by going down to only two quarterbacks; the team actually wanted a third-string quarterback, but not Lynch.
When the Seahawks added Smith that May, it was apparent that he would have had to do a lot wrong to not be Wilson’s backup. Still, the timeline towards Lynch vs Lock isn’t that far off from our current reality. To be fair, Lynch would have to be a much better version of the one in this universe.
Leave it up to Adam Schefter to make it sound like Lynch was in the running…
But it wasn’t that surprising at the time that Smith won the backup job. However, part of his road towards doing that so he could upgrade to competing for Seattle’s starting gig was the Seahawks’ mock scrimmage game in early August. That scrimmage is on deck for Saturday and I’m going to cover what happened last year (and how that reflected realities for the 2021 season) and what to watch for tomorrow.
Carroll called Saturday a “really big day” for Drew Lock and Geno Smith and I’ll preview that competition and everything else that Seahawks fans should watch for in Seattle’s annual mock game.
