The Brief Not So Wondrous Era of Geno Smith

THE BRIEF NOT SO WONDROUS ERA OF GENO SMITH

REX RYAN IS MAKING THE RIGHT DECISION in benching Geno Smith. Michael Vick will likely not be the QB savior the Jets have been waiting for. Ok Fine. It wasn’t Mark Sanchez or Tim Tebow either. Does anyone have Chad Pennington’s number? Those were the days, Jets Fans, weren’t they? The point though, is that the Geno Smith experiment looks like it might be over, and it should be. He wasn’t the answer, and it’s become abundantly clear, regardless of what Jets optimists (yes, they do exist) might want to believe. Rex Ryan knows he’s coaching for his job, and it’s an aging Vick, not Geno Smith who gives him the best chance to win. Geno Smith has played so poorly in his first 1.5 seasons that he cannot be looked at as a project. The Jets have to face the truth: Geno Smith is a bust.

2013: A MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR THE JETS

The Jets finished 9^th in QB Support last year. They actually had a pretty decent squad, and they also caught a few lucky breaks. They should have made the playoffs, and they might have with just one or two more wins. Unfortunately, Geno Smith played downright awful in a number of games. The Jets lost 8 times, and more than a couple were due primarily to poor QB play.

Here are Smith’s basic numbers from those 8 losses:

COMP	ATT	COMP %	YARDS	Y/Att	TD	INT
121	235	51%	1404	5.97	2	17

His TAVA score for those games averaged out to -2.79 as he reached Blaine Gabbert and Josh Freeman levels of ineffectiveness. Consider this: during those 8 losses, Geno Smith quarterbacked 90 drives, and the Smith led offense scored a whopping 68 points (8.5/game, 0.37 points per drive). You don’t need advanced statistics to know that’s pretty lousy.

BUT THE REALITY IS ACTUALLY EVEN WORSE. Smith threw four interceptions returned for TDs in those games (He leads the league in these in the last season and a half by the way). He also had a fumble returned for a TD. If you subtract those 35 points off turnovers from the 68 point total, that means the offense had 33 net points in those 90 drives. That averages out to 5 points a game. FIVE. Maybe you still believe in Smith. Maybe you think he’s still young and we should cut him a break. I just cherry picked his worst games from 2013, right? That may be true, but his worst games in that season were half of the season. Half of the time Geno Smith led the offense, they scored an average of 5 net points a game. That makes it mighty hard to make the playoffs.

2013: VERY FEW SIGNS OF LIFE

Ok, Smith has looked better in SOME games this year, but he’s still playing very far below league average for the Jets. He currently ranks 31^st out 34 qualifying QBs in TAVA, ahead of only E.J. Manuel (also benched), and rookie QBs Blake Bortles and Teddy Bridgewater.

Smith has 13 turnovers and 8 total TDs in his first eight games. That’s on pace to be worse than last season. And some of his turnovers (like the pick six against Chicago) have played an all too familiar critical role in the game’s final outcome.  It says something that one of Smith’s “better” games was against the Broncos, where he completed just barely over 50 % of his passes for 4.4 yards an attempt. This was a game where, with his team trailing by seven, Smith ended his performance by going 1/5 for 4 yards, a sack, and a pick six. This was best game by TAVA, and it was his third best by QBR. That’s not a good thing.

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IS THAT SMITH'S POOR PLAY TOO OFTEN CAUSES THE JETS TO LOSE WINNABLE GAMES. Let’s assume that just about any young QB will lose when QB support is low enough to create a 15 % win probability or lower, and let’s also assume that just about any QB will win when support leads to an 85 % win probability or higher. It’s those games in the middle where a QB makes the difference, and that’s exactly where Geno has struggled in his first 24 starts. This is how he has done when starting in those games:

GAMES WHERE WIN PROBABILITY  IS BETWEEN 15 % and 85 %

QB	WINS	LOSSES	EXPECTED WINS
G. Smith (2013)	4	7	6.07
G. SMITH (2014)	0	5	2.30

There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of improvement so far. Where an AVERAGE QB (not great, but average) might have been able to help the Jets to an record 8-8 or even 9-7 record in such games, the Jets have gone 4-12. Geno Smith is sinking the Jets. Compare those numbers to the first two seasons of Andrew Luck, and see what a difference a high quality young QB can make.

GAMES WHERE WIN PROBABILITY  IS BETWEEN 15 % and 85 %

QB	WINS	LOSSES	EXPECTED WINS
A. Luck	18	3	9.79

Ok, ok. That was a low blow. Even I admit that comparing Smith, a second round pick, to Luck is patently unfair. No one expects him to be Andrew Luck, and the Jets don’t need him to be. So, how about this? Let’s compare him to someone else. Let’s compare him to the first two seasons of Ryan Tannehill, another young QB who has recently faced the possibility of being benched.

GAMES WHERE WIN PROBABILITY  IS BETWEEN 15 % and 85 %

QB	WINS	LOSSES	EXPECTED WINS
R. Tannehill	11	12	11.04

And there you can begin to see the problem. Ryan Tannehill is performing at league average. He hopes to eventually be better than that, and there are concerns that maybe he never will be. Tannehill, not Geno Smith, is still a work in progress. QBs who perform at league average, will give you the team’s expected wins or close to it. Excellent QBs will give you higher than your expected wins, and guys like Geno Smith will give you far fewer. For a team that went 8-8 last year, a QB who costs his team 2-4 wins a year (compared to the hypothetical average QB) is unacceptable. The sooner the Jets realize that and move on, the sooner they’ll be able to find their QB of the future… and maybe win a few more games in the meantime. Maybe, they could even save Rex Ryan’s job. Although, maybe Jets fans don’t want that at this point.