All the extra details that brought Geno Smith from the Seahawks to the Raiders

From Florida to West Virginia to New York to San Diego to Seattle to Las Vegas, Geno Smith has been on quite a football journey.

This latest – and perhaps most surprising move – that sent Geno Smith from the Seattle Seahawks to the Las Vegas Raiders involved a culmination of much of Smith’s past.

Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated recently shed light on a flurry of connections that helped facilitate the Seahawks trading their three-year starting quarterback.

In it, the initiatory conversation took place, not this offseason, but actually last one. Geno said his conversation with John Schneider was not malicious, but certainly made it clear that the team held no iron-clad commitments towards him.

“Just based on that conversation, I kind of knew the direction the team was going,” Smith said Friday morning, after a workout in his hometown of Miami.

In part, as a result of that discussion, Smith went into 2024 knowing that in ’25, he’d be looking to the Seahawks for a recommitment. Beyond just the money, he’d want them to show him that they saw him as their starter for the foreseeable future.

Now as we all know, Seattle did make a meaningful offer to Geno Smith, which he refused, without a counter offer. There isn’t much in the way of new info as far as that negotiation, but I would like to highlight a couple of revelations in particular before turning attention to the relationship aspect of it all.

Breer suggests Geno felt the following things to be true (these are directly from the article)

It was a solid offer
It was well shy of what Smith wanted in average per year
It was not enough to negate the feelings of low commitment from team to him, especially as it held to typical Seahawk contracts with little to no guaranteed money in the latter years

I continue to not know what to make of the reporting on Seattle’s offer, Smith’s wishes, and the fact that he essentially signed the Sam Darnold contract plus one dollar.

And on and on it goes, with only vague agreement as to what was offered and what was expected.

But money wasn’t the only factor, in fact since we’ve seen the final numbers, it wasn’t necessarily the strongest factor.

While Geno Smith did not speak ill of the business dealings between he and Schneider, he did write back about the team’s stated intentions for the future. After hearing the team wanted to lean into this new young core, Smith wanted to see respect for him evidenced in the contract offer.

He apparently didn’t.

But again, man, when you’re talking about business, and you’re talking about a quarterback who wants not only to get paid—every player wants to get paid—but to be respected, that’s the most important thing. It’s the respect factor.

And I just felt like there was a disconnect there.

That search for respect found its home in the coach who finally gave Smith his real big break, the coach that Geno never stopped talking to, even after he was fired last year.

Geno Smith and Pete Carroll continued to talk all throughout the 2024 season.

There were reportedly two other teams interested in trading for Smith. But the Pete Carroll connection was just too strong, and the Seahawks acknowledged that the Raiders would be far and away the best fit for Smith.

Even beyond Carroll, Smith knows the new offensive coordinator. Chip Kelly tried to recruit Geno to Oregon, and has stayed in touch over the years. Kelly just spent the last season coaching Geno’s wildly talented cousin, receiver Jeremiah Smith at Ohio State.

I do want to spend a minute on this coaching bit. We can admit that Mike Macdonald has/had one of the hardest jobs in the recent NFL, because he wasn’t asked to come in and take over something that was dysfunctional. Macdonald was asked to follow a guaranteed-lock Seahawks Hall of Fame coach who was let go because the team had settled into a dirge of five points above average. That’s a tough gig. Not only that, but you’ve also got a situation with a head who is three years older than the starting quarterback, who prefers the insight and advice from his previous head coach.

This starts to feel like the necessary move. Macdonald’s clearly got some good things going, and the team has been – openly, even – trying to create greater alignment across the roster.

Where are you at with all this? How do you feel about the Smith trade now and everything that has transpired, including this latest story?