The Seattle Seahawks are 5-3, and they are tied with San Francisco for first place in the NFC West. At the start of the season, if someone from the future were to have said to you that they would be in this position by early November, would you have gladly taken that news well?

I would have received it with joy. I’m going to guess that a lot of Seahawk fans would have, too.

Funny what a beat down on the road will do to a lotta fans, though. It’s annoying to write my thoughts about this subject matter, but since this debacle of a game in Baltimore, every time I turn on sports radio, or glance through Twitter X, I seem to be hearing and seeing a whole lotta whether or not the Seattle Seahawks should bench Geno Smith right now. So, here I am, again, writing my thoughts about why the Seahawks should not do this.

Geno Smith has had a rough four game stretch where he has turned the ball over eight times. The Seahawks have just played the top two NFL defenses in back to back weeks, and the Bengals defense isn’t any slouch either. Geno struggled against the Bengals, Browns, and had a really rough game against Baltimore, and yet he played fairly good against the Cardinals. The Seahawks are 2-2 in this stretch.

I don’t think Geno Smith has been helped by the play calling of Shane Waldron over this month, and I have been pretty outward about my thoughts on that. Waldron has shifted away from a lot of the multiple tight end looks and play action plays that were very successful in September. Why he has done this, I do not know. If I were to guess, I would suspect that those formations and plays have come at the expensive of getting Jaxon Smith Njigba more involved in the offense as its slot receiver.

On top of that, there has been a sharp imbalance between the run and pass. The other week against Cleveland the team ran 18 times to 37 passes. Against Baltimore, they ran 15 times to 28 passes. With no real commitment to the ground game, and a sharp deviation away from what was working well during the first month of the season, this whole entire offense lacks an identity.

Therefore, what I suspect we see Seattle attempting to do over the next few games is to correct course with Geno Smith. Pete Carroll has already started sounding the bell about getting the run game going more, and doing things as coaches to further help Geno out. I think the plan moving forward is to do everything they can to get Geno playing better, and more confidently. I think in those plans could be a return to things that worked really well for him, getting the tight ends more involved, getting the ground game going to build play action off of, and having better check down options available.

Benching Geno Smith now before giving him a chance to work himself out of this rut with more supportive play calling, when this team is tied for first place in the division, would be a potentially devastating move impacting the chemistry and culture of this team. He is a beloved member of the locker room, and he is a team captain.

If Carroll were to be the hard ass coach that some of the more toxic members of the Seahawks fanbase would like him to be, and bench Geno now, right in front of two winnable games, for Drew Lock, and if Drew Lock were to play not as good as Geno, and Seattle were to lose both of those games, you can bet every last dollar in your savings accounts that his coaching decision would set a gasoline fire to his locker room culture. No way could he be able to look his players in the eye with his “always compete and win forever” messaging, and be taken seriously. No sensible head coach would risk doing that, and the ones that would generally find themselves fired at the end of the season.

I get why some fans remain more intrigued by Drew Lock, too. He’s younger that Geno Smith, and he’s more athletic. His launch points would probably be more extended in roll outs, and he can probably make some fun plays with his legs. Here’s the reality, though, if the Seattle coaches and players felt that Drew Lock would give Seattle a better chance to win over Geno Smith, Drew Lock would be the starter. They don’t, so he isn’t. It is as simple as that.

While we are on that subject of Lock, let’s be real about what Seattle’s likely plans are for their long term solution to the quarterback situation. Drew Lock was probably brought back to get a further look at how he is picking up the system, but there is a DEEP quarterback class laying ahead in the 2024 draft.

Seattle probably opted not to draft Will Levis this past Spring because they know what lies ahead. There could be as many as ten quarterbacks taken within the first two rounds of next year’s draft, and that is not an exaggeration. It is very possible that Seattle sent their second round pick to the Giants for Leonard Williams knowing that it isn’t necessarily going to harm their chances of drafting a young passer that they really like.

So when I look at these quarterbacks in college and I see Drew Lock, I just see a much greater likelihood that there is going to be some young cat on a rookie contract next year that folks are excited about than I see Drew being any sort of real heir apparent to Geno Smith. I think the only way Drew Lock really becomes The Guy moving forward is if Geno Smith doesn’t play better with adjusted play calling, they lose the next handful of games, and then they decide to run with Drew just to see what’s there, and he miraculously balls out in the final month of December. Either that, or Geno gets knocked out for the season, and Drew comes in under that scenario and balls out, as well, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for either scenario to occur.

So my advice to you, if you are a Twelve clamoring for Drew Lock is to do the same as I, and do not hold your breath. Breathe, and see how Geno Smith responds over these next few games with better play calling, and maybe getting Abe Lucas back finally at right tackle. If Geno Smith stinks it up under those circumstances, then we can have a more proper discussing of seeing with Drew can do.

Until then, just breathe.

Go Hawks.