The Seattle Seahawks made waves this offseason, trading Geno Smith to the Las Vegas Raiders then agreeing to terms with former Minnesota Viking Sam Darnold to replace him.
It was a bold move by GM John Schneider, and only time will tell which version of Darnold they’re getting; the quarterback who led the Vikings to a 14-3 record in his lone season as their starter, or the one who shrunk in Week 18 and the Wild-Card round.
On the latest episode of “The Athletic Football Show,” Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen discussed whether Seattle was right to put their future in Darnold’s hands.
A partial transcript has been edited for clarity and length. The full episode is available on YouTube below or in “The Athletic Football Show” feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Robert: As you think about the Geno Smith and third-round pick for Sam Darnold swap here from Seattle, where does this leave you with the current state of the Seahawks?
Derrik: I’m going to reframe it two different ways — pre- and post-trade. Pre-Geno trade I was optimistic about where the Seahawks were going. They maybe got a bit fortunate to win 10 games last year, but I liked where the defense was headed and with one or two more pieces you could have sold me. The offensive line’s interior needed some work and DK Metcalf was going to be expensive, but you could sell me on it. Geno Smith, to me, is a top-12 quarterback too, so you could see how they could compete for the top of the division next year. Then they trade Smith and they get a third-round pick back. Which isn’t nothing — a top-100 pick is nice — but I was still struggling with it. Then they also traded DK, so now you’re trading your quarterback, one of your two best pass-catchers and you sign Sam Darnold, who would have made a lot of sense for Minnesota to re-sign because of the familiarity and how good the setup was. None of the setup in Minnesota is present in Seattle. That is why I have struggled with it so far.
Robert: The DK and Geno trades are two different things to me. I prompted you with a potential DK trade in December when I came to the conclusion they were best suited to trade DK. That was when they were up against it with the cap and they’ve since cut a bunch of guys and created a decent amount of cap space. But still, with Geno’s contract on the books, this was not a team flush with space. The pick they could get for DK I always thought would probably be a second. A second-round pick and $30 million a year; I would rather have those resources elsewhere than on DK Metcalf. That part of it I was fine with. The Geno part is a little bit tougher to stomach. If you listen to our conversation with Michael-Shawn Dugar (The Athletic’s Seahawks beat writer), he was adamant Seattle was not taking a significant step back on purpose and not trying to tear this thing down even a little bit. They want to win now and there’s urgency to win now. On paper, if you look at it, if you’re the Seahawks and say, ‘We can either have Geno Smith or Sam Darnold on a lesser price and a third-round pick,’ I get that as a theoretical exercise, because Darnold is seven years younger and knows Klint Kubiak and this offensive system, there’s selling points to that.
But there’s a lot of risk in moving on from a quarterback like Geno. We saw Sam be good for one year in a pretty darn good situation in Minnesota. Not the best pass protection, but significantly better than what they were dealing with in Seattle over the last couple of years. He also had Kevin O’Connell, Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, so it was a good situation. It’s not going to be as good of a situation in Seattle, even if the scheme change can mitigate some of the offensive line concerns. I get it if you’re John Schneider and you’re saying, ‘We got lines in the sand here. I’d rather have Sam at $37m and a third-round pick than Geno who’s seven years older at $45m without that pick.’ That’s fine. But if you’re trying to sell that you’re doing what you can to win this year, you’re probably now worse at quarterback than you were and it’s more of an uphill battle to get to those 10 wins again.
Derrik: That’s exactly where I’m at. I understand why their thought process was getting a third back, $10 million cheaper and younger at quarterback. But with Darnold specifically — again I’ve said this 100 times — if you crush the pocket on him a little bit and speed things up, he’s going to crumble a bit. The biggest issue on the Seattle roster right now is their offensive line. Maybe they’ll fix that and I’ll feel differently. But until then, I don’t love it. It just feels like you’re paying for something that’s going to end up closer to Carolina Panthers Sam Darnold than Minnesota Vikings Sam Darnold. Which is not the worst starting quarterback in the league, but it’s not what they’re paying for.
Robert: I do believe his time in San Francisco and his experience with O’Connell has appreciably changed him as a quarterback. There’s still going to be moments that are scary and frustrating, but I do think we are going to see a better version of him moving forward even if the circumstances around him deteriorate a little bit from Minnesota to Seattle. Again, the familiarity with Kubiak — who he worked with in San Francisco — I think that matters. But if you’re looking at Seattle’s offensive situation overall, the idea of going out and getting Kubiak and moving to an offensive system that you think can hide some of your offensive line talent, after having an offensive system last year that left it baking in the sun for everyone to see, that felt like the right middle-ground approach. Where you don’t need to change everything, you just need to tweak some of the things you’re doing.
Trading DK, getting a second and the $30 million and using some of those excess savings to sign a guard in free agency or upgrade the interior offensive line. Then drafting a vertical receiver and saying, ‘With those pieces and the scheme change, we feel like we’re going to put Geno in a much better spot and that’s going to be enough for us to have a decidedly above average offense and we like the trajectory of our defense,’ that’s where I was hoping they would land. That’s a reasonable place to be because I’m a huge fan of Geno Smith, but they ultimately decided to take it to a more extreme place than that.
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