Seahawks sign Geno Smith to be the new Tarvaris Jackson

The Seahawks appear to be on the verge of signing Russell Wilson’s backup, Geno Smith. Will he be the new Tarvaris Jackson?

Depending on who one believes, the Seahawks are either signing Geno Smith or he is coming in for a visit to Seattle. I am going to go with what Adam Schefter reports and assume that Seattle is going to sign Smith. Smith will be the backup quarterback to Russell Wilson and I hope Smith never plays a down.

This is no disrespect to Smith. He is probably a fine fellow. But Wilson makes Seattle a playoff contender and few quarterbacks living or dead could do that. For three seasons Wilson had a backup named Tarvaris Jackson. Jackson could run a similar offense to Wilson, but just do it much less effectively.

Enter Smith. Smith is about the same size as Jackson was and has similar athletic traits. So, Smith is a bit Wilson-lite. Jackson and Smith actually have quite a bit in common. Both were second round draft picks in the years they came out of college. For Jackson, that was 2006. For Smith, it was  2013. And neither Jackson nor Smith lived up to being taken as high as they were.

The other key thing, of course, is that Smith and Jackson are really both career backups where if they are your favorite teams’ starting quarterback, your favorite team is in trouble. Jackson actually had a record of 17-17 as a starter. Smith’s record as a starter is 12-19. He was on some pretty bad Jets teams the first four years of his career, however.

Seattle signed Smith because they needed more options to back up Wilson. Before the Smith signing, Seattle really only had Paxton Lynch as a viable option. And this was not a good option, but simply an option nonetheless. Smith adds a bit of drama to the backup quarterback position if nothing else. And Smith can run the same kind of offense that Wilson can run and even took a peek at Smith before last season.

But let’s be honest. 12s hope Smith, nor Lynch, ever play a down with Seattle. Not a meaningful down anyway. If either comes into a game with the game in doubt, that means something has happened to Wilson and that would be a true tragedy.