3 2022 Seahawks QBs now in very different situations

For a day in March, 2022, the Seahawks had Geno Smith, Russell Wilson, and Drew Lock. Where do their respective values currently stand? Seaside Joe 1998

When the Seahawks play their third and final preseason game against the Browns on Saturday, it will mark the 12-year anniversary of arguably the most pivotal preseason game in Seattle’s franchise history. August 24, 2012 was the night this happened and changed the course of Seahawks football forever:

A 44-14 preseason win over the Chiefs in which rookie quarterback Russell Wilson threw two second quarter touchdowns and leapfrogged over Matt Flynn to become Seattle’s Week 1 starter, a job that he would hold for the next 160 Seahawks games (including playoffs) in a row.

Pop Quiz Hot Shot: Without looking it up, can you name either of the two players who Wilson threw a touchdown pass to that night?

(If you need a reminder of how much differently coaches treated the preseason not that long ago, Earl Thomas returned an interception 75 yards for a touchdown…with four minutes left in the third quarter of a preseason game. And a few minutes later, Golden Tate had a 57-yard punt return touchdown. We don’t even expect to see a single starter on the field on Saturday for any amount of time.)

Since Wilson won the job, there haven’t really been any “former Seahawks quarterbacks” to discuss.

Flynn thought he might be the Raiders quarterback in 2013, but the team released him after one start in which he had an interception and three fumbles. He spent a few weeks on the Bills depth chart prior to being released for a second time in a month, then he played in five full games when he went back to the Packers after both Aaron Rodgers and another former Seattle QB, Seneca Wallace, got injured. In fact, Flynn helped Green Bay make a stunning playoff appearance that season, including coming back from a 26-3 deficit to the Cowboys by throwing four second half touchdowns.

How many quarterbacks can say, “I was the NFL’s best story in the second-to-last start of my career”?

The other quarterback who Wilson skipped in line, Tarvaris Jackson, would not start another game in his career. His last 20 career pass attempts would come as Wilson’s backup from 2013-2015. Since them, Seattle’s most notable backup (besides Geno Smith) has probably been Alex McGough, the USFL MVP who could say that the Packers will be his final career NFL team. (McGough, who has tried to switch to receiver to revive his career, is a free agent.)

Already a franchise that hates to dabble too seriously in the quarterback market (as explained here), for ten years Wilson was the Seahawks’ ticket to ward off fans who really want to be involved in the quarterback market. As soon as Seattle traded Wilson to the Denver Broncos though, that ticket was no longer valid and really for the past 30ish months, a lot of Seahawks fans have been asking, “Why isn’t the team getting more involved in the quarterback market?”

GM John Schneider has made 27 draft picks in the last three years since trading Wilson and not one of them have been used on a quarterback.

Actually, with two quarterbacks chosen from 135 career picks as the Seahawks general manager, only 1.5% of Schneider’s draft choices have played the most important position in football.

Seattle’s decision this past offseason to replace Drew Lock with Sam Howell by swapping two draft picks apiece (thereby meaning that the Seahawks didn’t actually lose any quantity, only a little bit of quality) for the quarterback who led the NFL in interceptions last season is 100% a “classic Seahawks quarterback move”.

Hate it or dislike it, that is how the Seahawks “quarterback”.

Tuesday BONUS article: 6 ways the Seahawks have IMPROVED since the start of training camp!

With regards to which starting quarterbacks have been on the Seahawks since the day of the trade, it’s interesting to think about the fact that on March 8, 2022, Wilson, Geno, and Lock were all kind of on Seattle’s roster that day; Wilson was on the roster that morning, Lock was on the roster that night, and though he was a pending free agent, the Seahawks were the only team that could negotiate with Geno at that point.

It would take another month before the Seahawks made the Geno reunion official with a one-year contract and now here we sit going into the 2024 season and Smith is by far the safest, most-respected, and highest-paid quarterback of the trio:

Geno earns $22.5 million in cash from the Seahawks (assuming that the team doesn’t go back to the bargaining table) to be the starter, whereas Lock takes in $5 million to be Daniel Jones’ backup for the time being on the Giants, and Wilson is making just $1.2 million from the Steelers due to the nature of his contract with the Broncos and NFL rules stipulating that essentially he was already paid by Denver. (So don’t get me wrong, Wilson is by far the richest and is getting a lot of money to not play for the Broncos.)

By base salary and 2024 cash though, Geno is the top-ranked of this group.

But right now, all three are in a similar-yet-different situation involving another quarterback on his team’s roster and as dramatic as the quarterback rotisserie was in 2022, there could be just as much movement and as many surprises by the time we get to 2025.

Geno-Howell, Seahawks

A month and a half ago, I wrote that maybe Sam Howell was lucky to be entrenched as the Seahawks backup going into the 2024 season. It certainly feels like a better situation than being Jayden Daniels’ backup in Washington with Kliff Kingsbury as the offensive coordinator, because not even Moons fans want to see him again. As soon as a team brings in a better young prospect than the previous young prospect, the old young prospect is now no better than “old by comparison” to the new young prospect.

Though the situations are a little different, it is basically the same as the Bears clearing out Justin Fields for Caleb Williams and the Patriots clearing out Mac Jones for Drake Maye. In theory, Fields and Jones might have been the best backup options for Chicago and New England, but letting your former hope linger behind your new hope invites potential hopelessness.

It’s the same if Seattle brings back Lock to backup Geno this year, because my lasting image of Drew Lock in a Seahawks uniform will always be throwing a game-winning touchdown pass against the Eagles.

For as long as Lock would play behind Geno, that’s an invitation for fans to go, “Remember when…” every time Geno has a bad play or a bad game. But we don’t have any good reasons yet to think that Sam Howell is better than Geno and so long as you don’t think that Lock is a future star, it’s the best of both worlds to replace him with Howell this year:

He’s younger, he’s got more potential, and yet he’s also somehow less threatening to the team’s intention to let Geno Smith be the starter at both the start and the end of the 2024 season than Lock might have been.

It’s really only if the Seahawks start 0-4 or something that Mike Macdonald would consider benching Geno for Howell any earlier than December or January. In my opinion.

When I say that Howell could be “at an advantage” by being the backup right now, it’s only because he gets to watch Ryan Grubb’s NFL version of his offense develop not only from an outside view, but also within the quarterback room and during an entire offseason/preseason/regular season of practices and meetings without the pressure of actually being the one to make some of the mistakes that Geno will inevitably make just because it’s a new offense.

Meanwhile, Geno’s also at an advantage: If this thing hums right away, Geno could end up with all of the negotiating power to get the respectable deal that he’s probably asking for right now.

But the Seahawks have the biggest advantage of all: They don’t need to pay Geno until 2026 and he might not last that long. They don’t need to pay Howell until 2026 and he might not last that long. They have no obligation to spend more money on any quarterback this season or next season and with Lock, that would have had to be a more expensive and immediate decision. Speaking of which…

Drew Lock-Daniel Jones

Say what you will about Daniel Jones ability to play quarterback…

The Giants insist that they’re okay with Jones as the starter, Lock as the backup, and Tommy DeVito in third place. Assistant GM Brandon Brown, who is maybe being highlighted so much lately on Hard Knocks and in the news because the team wants to prop him up as a near-future successor to GM Joe Schoen, says that despite any struggles you see right now that the Giants feel this is part of the process of coming back from ACL surgery.

Yes, it’s expected that if your franchise quarterback tears his ACL that one of the steps to returning to full health is throwing a 5-yard pick-six from his own end zone to avoid a safety that he created. Happened to Tom Brady all the time in 2009!

But the real reason that the Giants aren’t turning the job over to Lock is that despite early reports that the team signed him to compete with Jones as the starter, he’s shown no signs in camp or preseason that he’s better than Jones. Now that Drew Lock is off of the Seahawks roster, I think I’m safe to say without much pushback that he’s not a good NFL quarterback and that he won’t make his old team regret letting him go to another franchise.

Now most of the people saying that Lock should start are Giants fans because now Lock is the grass on the other side of Jones, as opposed to when he was on the other side of Geno.

The true sign of a “franchise quarterback” is not how much they’re paid (Daniel Jones is paid A LOT), it’s whether or not fans of the team want to see anyone else play quarterback. It’s why no other Seahawks quarterback besides Wilson mattered from 2012-2021, and why the topic of “Who’s next?” hasn’t really gone away since Wilson was traded to the Broncos despite how bad Wilson was on the Broncos.

Speaking of which…

Russell Wilson-Justin Fields

I really hope to one day read a book that covers the mass hysteria that has followed Justin Fields from the 2021 draft-present. Despite being objectively one of the five worst passers in the NFL since he was drafted (Fields is ranked 38th and Howell is 39th in passer rating over their careers) and contrary to what most in the media have told you (he’s actually getting worse with time, not better) Fields continues to ride his Twitter/ESPN-catered support system into national coverage that he’s being robbed of a fourth chance.

I don’t think it’s possible to play quarterback worse than Justin Fields and to get more NFL experts and talking heads to treat you like you’re Justin Montana. If an NFL team could win games in the modern era with a quarterback who can rush for 1,500 yards without needing to also be able to read a defense and complete a pass to his second or third option, then I might be with everyone else on this whole “let’s overrate this one quarterback and treat him differently than we treat every other bust in history because we feel bad about going back on our predictions that he’d be amazing” train.

But the Bears didn’t trade Fields because they got the number one pick from the Panthers or because they knew that Fields was closer to free agency than Caleb Williams. Even if Fields had been a free agent in 2024, would he have been as popular as Gardner Minshew? Recall that in January, ESPN was proposing that the Falcons trade the eighth overall pick for Fields, and I wrote that Chicago wouldn’t even get a second rounder for him. Eventually, he was traded to the Steelers for a sixth round pick that only becomes a fourth round pick if Fields plays in 51% of the snaps this year.

Now ESPN, and most of the NFL media landscape to be fair, has been putting out almost daily stories since Pittsburgh put Wilson and Fields in the same QB room that the Steelers would do a disservice to their fans by playing the better quarterback over the younger quarterback.

I’m telling you: Fields and his agent couldn’t get better PR from the media if they were paying for it and half of the time I have to question if conspiracies like that could have any validity because to me, it wouldn’t be any more ridiculous to say that the Broncos should start Zach Wilson and that a team should trade for Trey Lance to start for them.

Those three quarterbacks ARE THE SAME!

Now if you’re proposing that Fields could be a “trick quarterback” like Taysom Hill, maybe you’re onto something. I’m not saying Fields isn’t one of the most talented athletes in the NFL, or that he’s not dangerous as a runner, but did I somehow sleep through a Super Bowl that was one by a team that had the best athlete at quarterback?

I don’t recall a single one.

Even the best dual threat Super Bowl winning quarterbacks of all-time—Russell Wilson, Steve Young, Aaron Rodgers—were successful because of their talents as passers, not as runners. Running was a complementary skill to make them better, but they HAD to have the ability to run the offense as a passer.

Fields is as bad of a passer as any starter or backup in the NFL, yet the media is already using the same “light bullying tactics” to nudge him into the spotlight before the season, even if it means treating the Steelers like they’re the Bears; treating Mike Tomlin as if he’s Matt Nagy, who the media said should be fired just for wanting to sit Fields as a rookie; and treating a probable Hall of Fame 35-year-old quarterback as if he’s Andy Dalton.

I repeat, you couldn’t pay for media coverage this good for a player who was traded for a sixth round pick because not one NFL team views him as a starter.

In the end, Russell Wilson will start because Mike Tomlin isn’t dumb and his job is safe. He won’t feel the pressure like Nagy or Matt Eberflus to do what the media and fans want out of fear of repercussions. It’s why Pittsburgh was the best destination for Fields: Tomlin could be the one head coach who the media is afraid to question. Case in point, you’re not hearing anyone at ESPN blame Tomlin for not naming Fields the starter already like they would have with most other coaches and most other teams.

Imagine if the Seahawks had kept Pete Carroll and traded for Fields, as some fans certainly hoped would happen this offseason. If Pete was coaching a Seahawks team with Fields behind Geno Smith, his job would already be over in the minds of people talking about football at ESPN.

Now, whether or not Wilson can keep that job and hold off Fields is a matter of team quality, I think. Based on how he played last season, I don’t think Wilson is bad enough to bench unless the team is losing and Pittsburgh hasn’t had a losing season since 2003.

Wilson need only be better than Kenny Pickett and the Steelers first nine games appear soft on paper going into the season: Falcons, Broncos, Chargers, Colts, Cowboys, Raiders, Jets, Giants, Moons.

If you’re Tomlin, do you bench Wilson for Fields if you’re 5-4 going into Week 11 against the Baltimore Ravens? It’s too risky. It wouldn’t make any sense unless Wilson was horrible and if Wilson is horrible, the Steelers won’t be 5-4.

The second half of Pittsburgh’s schedule is BRUTAL (Ravens twice, Browns twice, Bengals twice, plus Chiefs and Eagles) and the Steelers are going to need every win they can get prior to Thanksgiving. Maybe you throw Fields to the wolves in the middle of the season to confuse teams, but I don’t think any of those North defenses are afraid of a quarterback who has the second-highest INT% since 2021 (Howell has the highest) and the third-worst success rate, better only than Bryce Young and Zach Wilson.

Tuesday BONUS article: 6 ways the Seahawks have IMPROVED since the start of training camp!

Even if the fourth-worst success rate since 2021 belongs to Russell Wilson.

So do I think Wilson’s in a safe position? Not at all. Pittsburgh owes him nothing and only needs him if he plays better than he did in Denver. It’s just that Wilson is starting from ahead, Lock is starting from behind, and somehow two years after he seemed to be at the bottom of the rotation, Geno Smith is out-pacing them both.

Do you think Sam Howell knows that Saturday is the 12-year anniversary of the time a Seahawks QB who was never supposed to be a starter became the starter?