Seattle Seahawks should entertain a Geno Smith trade this offseason

Literally, anything is possible with the Seattle Seahawks currently. That is both good and bad, of course. Seattle has been a mostly successful franchise since Pete Carroll and John Schneider began running the team in 2010, but now Carroll is gone and Schneider is in full control of personnel decisions.

Schneider will, of course, work closely together with whomever the next head coach is. That is important for many reasons, obviously, but one huge reason is that the new head coach might be more future-looking than Pete Carroll was. Perhaps the new coach wants to start over at quarterback and not have Geno Smith as QB1 for the next year or two.

Smith is still under contract through 2025. His contract is structured so that if the Seahawks wanted to move on from Smith this offseason, they could. Smith is more costly to keep on the team than to not. If Seattle were to release Smith, the team would save $13,800,000. If the team chose to release Smith with a post-June 1st designation, Seattle would save $22.5 million.

The Geno Smith question will be an important one for the Seattle Seahawks this offseason

Honestly, though, it would make more sense to release Smith now and save almost $14 million than to release him post-June 1 and not be able to use that cap savings right away. That is if the Seahawks do release Smith, of course. If Seattle is going to move on from Smith it makes more sense to trade him and get something back in return.

As far as QB1s in the NFL go, Smith is not overly expensive. Smith's cap hit of $31.2 million in 2024 is 12th in the NFL, but nine quarterbacks have a cap hit of $35.4 million or more. Plus, most of those quarterbacks bring nowhere near the cap savings of Smith if they were released. In other words, Smith has one of the more team-friendly contracts among top-half-of-the-league quarterbacks.

And that last part is important. For all the Geno Smith haters, he is a top 15 quarterback, at worst. In 2022, he led the NFL in completion percentage and led the NFC in touchdown passes. In 2023, he was 12th in the league in total QBR. In his final four games of the season, Smith threw 8 touchdown passes and just one interception, and he ran for another touchdown. Those numbers are reasons for Seattle to keep Smith, but they are also reasons another team might want to trade for him.

Teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers, Las Vegas Raiders, and Atlanta Falcons were either decent or not far off and a quarterback like Geno Smith could make them playoff teams next year. Seattle should be able to get a first-round pick in return for Smith. The Falcons and Raiders easily have the cap room to pay for Smith as well. Whether the Seahawks want to move Geno Smith is unknown, but they have to at least be thinking about what they might get back for him.

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