Analysis: Why Geno Smith won’t be getting new deal from Seahawks soon

SEATTLE – The headline was certainly catchy.

“Report: Geno Smith wants a new deal in Seattle,” read the headline Saturday from the influential Pro Football Talk website.

Contained within was one piece of news that formed the basis of the story – a quote from longtime NFL Network reporter Mike Garafolo, who is known to be especially plugged in to all things Seahawks, during an appearance last week on the podcast of Jason Puckett, the former longtime Sports Radio 93.3 KJR personality who hosts his own podcast.

Garafolo stated that Smith’s representatives approached the Seahawks about redoing his contract – which runs through the 2025 season – sooner rather than later.

“They’ve talked about it,” Garafolo said. “They’ve tried to talk about it, I know that. That’s been something that’s been broached this offseason. So you know, (that) could be something that gets done before Week 1 and is addressed by the team.

“It didn’t seem like it was imminent on their (Seattle’s) part.”

And it doesn’t appear it will be.

League sources said nothing is going on between the sides, nor is there any expectation that there will be anytime soon.

That’s because if Smith is going to get a new contract to stay with the Seahawks – it almost certainly won’t happen now.

As the PFT story detailed, there is zero motivation for the Seahawks to give Smith a new deal when he has two years remaining on his contract.

It would also go against the team’s precedents.

The Seahawks have for years held to a policy of not extending or redoing contracts that have more than a year remaining, other than for restructures that help them out for salary-cap purposes.

An example of that is what the Seahawks did with Smith in February.

Smith signed a three-year contract with a base value of $75 million that, with incentives, could have pushed it to $105 million (he did not hit incentives in 2023 that could have earned him an additional $15 million in 2024).

In February, the Seahawks did a small restructure of Smith’s deal to turn a $9.6 million roster bonus into a signing bonus.

That gave Smith the money immediately while allowing the Seahawks to spread out the cap hit over this year and next, saving $4.8 million against the cap in 2024 and adding that total to 2025. That came roughly two weeks after a trigger passed making Smith’s $12.7 million salary for 2024 fully guaranteed.

The upshot of the two moves was to assure Smith’s standing as the team’s starting quarterback in 2024 – and it was no coincidence the Seahawks made that move after getting a sense at the NFL combine that the top six QBs in the draft were unlikely to be available when they chose at 16.

That restructure did not alter the years and money value terms of Smith’s deal.

Increasing his cap hit to $38.5 million for 2025 also all but assured he will get a new deal after this season.

A cap hit that big would shatter the record for largest single-season cap hit the team has carried, the $32 million of Russell Wilson in his last year with the team in 2021.

True, the cap continues to go up, so single-season cap hits and salaries also keep rising – teams have $255.4 million to spend on players this year, and it’s expected to rise to more than $260 million in 2025.

The Seahawks will almost certainly want to bring down Smith’s cap number.

More relevant is that, as noted, the precedent has been to give significant players new contracts before their final season – and Smith would want a longer-term deal at that point.

After the season, the Seahawks will feel more than comfortable to begin talking.

And the past few months have seemed to assure that they will want to keep Smith around.

That was a question in some people’s minds when the Seahawks traded for Sam Howell in March.

With a new coach in Mike Macdonald replacing Pete Carroll, anything and everything seemed on the table.

While Howell has played steadier of late, the gap remains wide between he and Smith.

Macdonald, who had little relationship with Smith when he took the job, has seemed to speak a bit more forcefully about Smith’s standing in recent interviews, notably earlier during training camp with Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated.

“I think that relationship is blossoming,” Macdonald said. “We’re not there yet; it’s still six months in or whatever. But we’re looking forward to where it evolves over the next few years.”

Possibly, being around Smith every day – rather than just what he’d seen from afar – has given Macdonald a greater appreciation for his game.

It’s also more than possible that maybe someone on Smith’s side – he’s represented by the Wasserman Group – broached the idea that if both sides want to continue the relationship, why not go ahead and do it now? It couldn’t hurt to ask, and every player wants more security.

But again, the Seahawks have held strongly to their policy of not redoing deals with more than a year remaining. One reason for that policy is getting through another season before going back to the table, just in case (Smith turns 34 in October).

Smith has noticed that QBs around the league have continued to sign record-breaking deals, notably Green Bay’s Jordan Love just a few weeks ago getting a four-year contract worth up to an average of $55 million per season, tying him with Trevor Lawrence and Joe Burrow as the highest-paid QBs on a per-year basis. Love has made only 18 NFL starts.

Those numbers are more than double the $25 million average of the base value of Smith’s deal.

“It’s hard not to see it,” Smith said last week while the team was practicing in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We all see it. I’m really happy for those guys. Whatever they get, they deserve. You pay attention to it, but you try to stay focused on what you have to stay focused on, which is my job here with Seahawks.”

In other words, the time to play is now, the time to talk is later.