The Super Bowl is here, and after grueling playoffs, the Seattle Seahawks will be facing the New England Patriots. This is going to be a very exciting matchup, and both teams have outperformed the expectations set for them before the season.
The Seahawks made some major changes last offseason to get to the Super Bowl, including trading away QB Geno Smith.
What Happened With the Seattle Seahawks’ Geno Smith Trade?
After finishing 10-7 last season, the Seahawks were in an interesting situation. They were very close to the playoffs, and, with Mike Macdonald’s first season as head coach, there was some leeway, but Seattle was forced to make a change at QB.
In 2022, Smith became the starter, and in shocking fashion, he led the team to the playoffs and won comeback player of the year. After so much inconsistency with the team that drafted him, the New York Jets, Smith’s late-career resurgence was extremely unexpected. He would then play for the Seahawks through 2024, and that’s where the trade happened.
After dealing with so much uncertainty early in his career, Smith wanted financial stability and commitment from the Seahawks as he entered a contract year. Seattle was unsure about doing this, so they made him available, and great news for them, a perfect trade partner existed.
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The Las Vegas Raiders hired former Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll as their new head coach, and he was the person who took a chance on Smith in 2022. If there was someone who was going to have interest in the QB, it was going to be Caroll, and with how much instability the Raiders had at QB, Smith was supposed to be a sure thing. According to PFSN’s QB Impact Metric, Smith was ranked 20th in 2022, 18th in 2023, and 17th in 2024. A steady improvement that the Raiders valued, so they made the trade.
In return for Smith, the Seahawks received a third-round pick, and the Raiders signed Smith to a contract extension. No one would have known how league-altering this trade would turn out to be.
The Aftermath of the Move
After trading away Smith, the Seahawks signed former Minnesota Vikings QB Sam Darnold to be their starter. The Raiders began to build around Smith and have high hopes for the season. Well, that’s not what happened.
Finishing the season as the worst team in the NFL, the Raiders have fired Carroll, and Smith will likely not be their starting QB in 2026.
His play this past season was horrible, finishing 34th among all QBs and first in interceptions (17) per PFSN’s QB Impact Metric. Now, the Raiders are expected to hire the Seahawks’ OC, Klint Kubiak, as the next HC and, with the first pick in the draft, select Indiana QB Fernando Mendoza.
On the other side of the trade, Seattle is fighting for the Super Bowl, and Darnold finished the season as the 13th-ranked QB.
The Raiders did not build. They just went out and got Smith and let their receivers all walk and did not replace them. Used the same horrid o line from the prior season. Any QB would have failed.