Geno Smith says something about the Seahawks that should never be said

The Seattle Seahawks Week 1 loss to the Los Angeles Rams was brutally ugly. In fact, reality reached back and slapped 12s in the face just like Will Smith did Chris Rock at the Oscars. Most of us assumed that Seattle would be good this year, at least better than the Rams. But Seattle didn't come close to defeating the Rams on Sunday.

Worse, however, was something Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith said after the team after the loss. According to Smith, "It just looked like (the Rams) were playing harder." This is completely unacceptable if you are a 12, a player on the Seahawks, or a member of Seattle's coaching staff.

I get that on any given Sunday one NFL team can beat another. These are grown men all getting paid to play a sport to make ends meet. Many players know their paychecks are on the line and play with pride.

Seattle Seahawks have zero excuses for how they played in Week 1

Seattle, though, played with zero pride. They played as if they had won a recent Super Bowl. The team was flat and like they thought they could win the game just by showing up. This would be bad enough in Week 10, but in Week 1 when the season is just beginning and every team is beginning with a 0-0 record? That's a bad look.

Geno Smith accepted part of the blame for Seattle simply not playing as hard as the Rams. He said, "We just didn't execute. … I'll be the first to say that, as always, put that on me. It's my job to make sure that we're always prepared, we're always competing, and I just feel like we didn't do that to the best of our ability in the second half."

Good for Geno Smith for saying that. But was he the issue really? Sure, as the quarterback of the team he has to be a leader. But the Seattle coaching staff is more to blame. The coaches have a duty to make sure the Seahawks are 100 percent ready to play with an excellent scheme to attack the other team and the ability to adjust if that original scheme doesn't work. The Seattle coaching staff simply failed their team prior to the game being played.

Los Angeles played as if they had something to prove, and they did. The Rams were 5-12 last year, and were playing without receiver Cooper Kupp. Most national pundits have written off the Rams this year and maybe for the next several seasons. But the Rams played as if they wanted to prove everyone wrong, and they did at least for one game.

The Seahawks, meanwhile, played as if they had nothing to prove; As if going 9-8 in 2022 was good enough. Seattle certainly didn't look like the team from last year even though the talent is still there, but the hunger wasn't. Starting a season without a drive to prove themselves again is simply unacceptable, just as the other team "playing harder" is.

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