Geno Smith as the Seattle Seahawks closed the campaign with a 10th victory. Will he get another significant payday in the form of an extension in 2025?
Coach Mike Macdonald threw his support behind Smith in an end-of-season press conference.
"I want Geno to be here," Macdonald said, via . "I think he's a heck of a player ... I feel like Geno's the best for the team right now. I'll be involved with it. Ultimately, it's not my decision. It's a Seahawks decision, but Geno knows how we feel about him, and we love him as our starting quarterback, for sure."
Smith finished his third season as the Seahawks starting quarterback, re-setting his own club record with 4,320 passing yards. He threw 21 touchdowns, earned a 70.4 completion percentage (a career-high) and tossed 15 interceptions. Smith is one of only five players to have 20-plus pass TDs in each of the last three seasons -- Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Jared Goff and Justin Herbert.
The Seahawks have finished above .500 in each season with Geno at the helm.
However, 2024 was a roller-coaster season, with the QB tossing some bad red-zone interceptions. The offense was a herky-jerky operation, never finding a groove despite the passing numbers.
"We did a lot of really good things, and one of those things was Geno's productivity, and this is something that I'm looking forward to building off of," Macdonald said. "I thought he had a really good year. We had a conversation yesterday, but the feeling you get was he's proud of the things we did but felt like we could have done a better job as an offense and as a team, and could have put ourselves in position to go into the tournament to go make a run at this thing."
The 34-year-old quarterback, who authored a new beginning to his career in Seattle three years ago, has kept the Seahawks offense afloat, making tough throws behind an offensive line that has been leaky, particularly up the middle. Smith also battled a late-season knee injury but didn't miss a start.
The Seahawks inked the veteran signal-caller to a three-year, $75 million contract in 2023. Entering the final year of his contract, Smith is set to earn $14.8 million in base salary, a $16 million roster bonus and a $200,000 workout bonus. Given his play, the $31 million in 2025 makes Smith underpaid relative to other starting signal-callers.
The question pressing forward is whether general manager John Schneider feels similarly to Macdonald and seeks an extension early in the offseason or it's an issue that lingers into the summer and perhaps training camp without resolution.
One big factor is who the Seahawks hire as the new offensive coordinator following the firing of Ryan Grubb on Monday. Macdonald indicated this week that the decision to change play-callers was in part due to the trajectory of the offense -- i.e., he wanted to run the ball more.
"We want our new coordinator to feel like they have a lot of influence in their staff, so we might have some movement when that happens and we might not," Macdonald said. "We'll kind of go through the process and figure it out as we go."
The Seahawks spent the season with Sam Howell as the backup quarterback, but it wouldn't be a surprise to see them extend Smith while bringing in a rookie who might eventually take the reins.
