If New York Jets fans were being honest, no one was particularly thrilled when the team acquired quarterback Geno Smith for the second time.
Too many remember his rocky first stint with the team in 2013-2016. That stint was derailed by injuries and a brawl in the locker room over $600 with a teammate. When his rookie contract expired, the Jets let him become an unrestricted free agent.
After that Smith’s talents took him to the New York Giants and Los Angeles Chargers before resurrecting his career in Seattle, where he became the NFL Comeback Player of the Year in 2022. During that season, he threw for 4,282 yards and 30 touchdowns while leading the league with a 69.8% completion percentage.
But Smith was seemingly on the downside of his career in his return to the Jets. In 2025, he struggled behind a poor Las Vegas Raiders line, The result was a record of 3-14 and the No. 1 draft choice for the Silver and Black, which they used to nab top quarterback Fernando Mendoza.
No quarterback in the league had thrown more interceptions in the previous two years combined than Smith. He had 32 INTs with the Seahawks and Raiders. So far this year, he hasn’t turned the ball over once.
Smith isn’t headed to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on roller skates, as ex-Jets coach Bill Parcells liked to say. But he is doing better than a lot of bigger names that manned the position for the Jets over the last few years in their first two games of the season.
- Geno Smith: 70% completion percentage, 462 yards, 1 touchdown
- Justin Fields: 57% completion percentage, 245 yards, 1 TD
- Aaron Rodgers: 60% completion percentage, 343 yards, 3 TDs, 1 INT
- Zach Wilson: 54% completion percentage, 310 yards, 2 TDs, 4 INTs
Smith and offensive coordinator Frank Reich are just getting warmed up. They are learning each other’s tendencies, including such mundane tasks as getting the plays in quickly.
Smith spoke about the tendency to let the play clock run down close to zero during his media availability.
“I think we’re going to use all the time we can on the play clock to get as much information as we can, and there’s times when we’ll get up there and we’ll snap it quick.
“It’s all a part of the game and we want to be mindful of the clock, we don’t want to be burning timeouts when we need them, also don’t want to take delay of games, and so there’s a chess match out there that you have to play, and we’re aware of the clock, and there’s things that we can do better, and I think that’s one of them.”
The Jets have a tough task in front of them in their Week 3 game against the Detroit Lions. But a good game from Smith will go a long way toward keeping the Jets competitive against a tough opponent.
