Geno Smith is just not very good at playing professional football. Yesterday he averaged just 4.4 yards per attempt today as the New York Jets fell to 1-5 on the season. With his 4-6 TD to INT ratio on the season and passer rating of only 69.3, he is not progressing at all. Since being drafted with the 39th overall pick in 2013, Smith has accumulated a career passer rating of just 67.2.
Jets Coach Rex Ryan will have a job until the end of the season, we learned yesterday. His “future with the company” is much more safe than Smith’s.
“If he’s released this year, I don’t know if Geno Smith gets another job in the National Football League.” – NFL Network’s Michael Robinson on New York Jets quarterback Geno Smith, on yesterday’s edition of NFL Gameday Morning.
“Geno Smith isn’t progressing like I think everybody thought he would…I watch him make two or three really big time throws and I think this guy has so much potential. But he just can’t develop that consistency,” Added Kurt Warner on the same program.
ESPN’s Sunday NFL Countdown took a different spin on it. Cris Carter on the Jets serious problems: “You blame it on the owner. He hired (Mike) Tannenbaum. He hired (John) Idzik. (Mark) Sanchez getting drafted, and Geno Smith. It’s hard for any coach to recover from two general managers like that and two quarterbacks that they have drafted like that.”
So the Jets, as a whole, have been the laughingstock of the NFL punditocracy for the past month. Here’s a collection of some quips from this past Sunday alone.
And Marshall Faulk’s dig at the Jets receiving corps may have trumped everybody them all. So it’s not all Geno’s fault. Not at all. However, he may have to endure more than his fair share of the responsibility; unfortunately.
Paul M. Banks owns, operates and very often writes The Sports Bank.net ,which is partners with Fox Sports. Read his features stories in the Chicago Tribune RedEye edition. Listen to him on 1620 The Zone. Follow him on Twitter (@paulmbanks). His work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including The Washington Post and ESPN 2