Geno Smith threw 17 interceptions in 15 games for the Las Vegas Raiders in 2025, leading the NFL in a category no quarterback wants to win. At 35 years old and under contract through 2028, Smith represents both a financial burden and a strategic miscalculation that will haunt the franchise for years. The decision to acquire him through trade looks worse with each passing week, raising fundamental questions about how organizations evaluate players they think they know.
Pete Carroll brought Smith to Las Vegas because he believed the quarterback could replicate his Seattle success in a new environment. Carroll had coached Smith for two seasons with the Seahawks, watching him resurrect a career that seemed finished after early failures with the Jets. In Seattle, Smith completed 64.5 percent of his passes, threw for more than 7,000 yards, and provided competent play that exceeded expectations for a journeyman backup turned starter.
But Seattle in 2022 and 2023 was not Las Vegas in 2025. The supporting cast differed. The offensive line quality diverged. The coaching staff and scheme changed. Most importantly, Smith aged two years while inheriting a roster construction that maximized his weaknesses rather than his strengths. Carroll’s familiarity with Smith became a liability rather than an asset because it created false confidence in translating past performance to different circumstances.
The Numbers Tell a Brutal Story
Smith completed just 59.8 percent of his passes in Las Vegas, a significant decline from his Seattle tenure. He threw 19 touchdowns against those 17 interceptions, producing a quarterback rating that ranked in the bottom third of the league. He averaged 201.7 yards per game, contributing to an offense that ranked last in virtually every meaningful category.
The interceptions stand out because they reflect both poor decision-making and deteriorating arm strength. Younger quarterbacks can occasionally get away with risky throws because their velocity compensates for tight windows. Smith at 35 no longer possesses that margin for error. Defenders had time to react to his throws, turning ambitious attempts into turnovers that killed drives and momentum.
The decline was not gradual but immediate. Smith struggled from Week 2 onward, never establishing rhythm or confidence. The loss to Jim Harbaugh’s Chargers seemed to break something fundamental in his approach. He became tentative in some situations and reckless in others, a combination that produced inconsistency at the position where consistency matters most.
Carroll publicly defended Smith throughout the season, insisting the quarterback was executing the game plan and that surrounding talent limitations explained the poor results. “Geno is under contract for next year,” Carroll said near season’s end, suggesting continuity at the position. But Carroll’s imminent firing rendered that statement meaningless. The next coach will inherit Smith whether he wants him or not.
General Manager John Spytek acknowledged the quarterback problem more directly. “The Raiders haven’t drafted a quarterback in the first round since JaMarcus Russell in 2007,” Spytek said. “That could very well change in April.” His comment signals organizational willingness to move on from Smith despite the financial commitment. But moving on creates its own problems.
Smith’s contract runs through 2028 with guaranteed money that makes releasing him expensive. The Raiders could cut him and absorb dead cap charges, or they could keep him as a backup and draft a successor. Neither option is appealing. Dead money from a bad quarterback contract constrains roster building. Paying $15 million per year for a backup creates inefficiency. The least bad choice is probably starting Smith one more year while a rookie develops, but that approach delays the rebuild and wastes a year of the rookie’s development time.
The Evaluation Failure
What went wrong? Carroll thought he understood Smith’s capabilities because he had coached him in Seattle. That familiarity should have provided insight into Smith’s strengths and limitations. Instead, it created blind spots that prevented accurate evaluation of how Smith would perform in Las Vegas.
First, Carroll overestimated how much of Smith’s Seattle success was attributable to the quarterback versus the system and supporting talent. Seattle had invested heavily in offensive line play, providing Smith time to throw and make decisions. Las Vegas entered 2025 with one of the league’s worst offensive lines, giving Smith no pocket and no time. The difference in protection quality alone explained much of the performance gap.
Second, Carroll underestimated aging curves for quarterbacks. Smith was 32 and 33 during his Seattle seasons, still physically capable of making all the throws required. At 35 in Las Vegas, his arm strength had declined noticeably. Throws that reached receivers in Seattle arrived late or off-target in Las Vegas. The two-year gap mattered more than Carroll anticipated.
Third, Carroll failed to account for scheme fit. Seattle’s offense under offensive coordinator Shane Waldron emphasized quick timing throws that minimized pressure and reduced decision-making complexity. Chip Kelly’s scheme in Las Vegas required more pre-snap reads and post-snap adjustments, playing to Smith’s weaknesses rather than his strengths. When the Raiders fired Kelly midseason, the scheme changed again, preventing Smith from ever getting comfortable.
Fourth, Carroll ignored the psychological impact of changing environments. Smith had rebuilt his confidence in Seattle after early career failures in New York. Moving to a new city, new teammates, and new expectations created stress that affected performance. Some quarterbacks handle that transition seamlessly. Smith did not.
These evaluation failures point to a broader problem in how NFL teams assess players. Familiarity bias leads organizations to overweight their direct experience with players while underweighting contextual factors that enabled past success. Carroll thought he knew Smith because he had coached him. But he knew Smith in one specific environment under specific conditions. That knowledge did not transfer to a different context with different variables.
The Organizational Cost
The Smith acquisition damaged the Raiders in multiple ways beyond just poor quarterback play. It cost draft capital to trade for him. It consumed salary cap space that could have addressed other roster needs. It created false expectations for immediate competitiveness that led to poor strategic decisions elsewhere.
Most importantly, it delayed the inevitable quarterback decision. The Raiders needed to draft and develop a young quarterback if they wanted long-term stability at the position. Instead, they traded for a 34-year-old veteran with limited upside, pushing the difficult choice to future years. Now they must address the position anyway, but they wasted a year and accumulated dead money in the process.
The decision to acquire Smith also reveals organizational dysfunction in the decision-making process. Who evaluated this trade and determined it made strategic sense? Did anyone push back on Carroll’s preference for his former player? Did the front office conduct independent evaluation, or did they defer to the coach’s judgment based on his familiarity?
Healthy organizations feature tension between coaching and front office perspectives. Coaches advocate for players they know and trust. Front offices provide skeptical analysis that challenges assumptions. The best decisions emerge from that creative friction. The Raiders appear to have lacked that dynamic, allowing Carroll’s familiarity bias to drive a major resource allocation without sufficient scrutiny.
The Path Forward
The Raiders face difficult choices at quarterback regardless of what they do with the No. 1 pick. If they draft a quarterback at No. 1, they must decide whether to start him immediately or let Smith play while the rookie develops. Starting the rookie throws him into a terrible situation with poor talent around him. Starting Smith delays development and risks damaging the rookie’s confidence by keeping him on the sideline.
If they trade down from No. 1, they must find a quarterback later in the draft or through free agency. Later first-round quarterbacks offer less certainty but also less pressure. Free agent veterans provide short-term competence but rarely develop into franchise players. Every option involves tradeoffs.
The least appealing option is running back Smith as the starter for 2026 without a developmental plan behind him. That approach satisfies no one. Fans want to see the future, not an aging veteran on a bad team. Players need hope that the organization has a plan for improvement. Smith himself deserves better than starting for a team that has already moved on mentally even if not contractually.
The most rational approach is probably drafting a quarterback at No. 1 or trading down to draft one later in the first round, then starting that rookie immediately. This accelerates the learning curve, aligns organizational timeline with player development, and gives fans something to invest in emotionally. It also exposes the rookie to difficulties that could undermine his confidence, but delaying only makes the problem worse.
Smith’s role in this scenario becomes clear: expensive backup and mentor. He can help the rookie prepare, provide veteran perspective, and step in if injury occurs. That is not the role anyone envisioned when the Raiders acquired him, but organizational failure has a way of creating expensive inefficiency.
Notes and Takeaways
The Geno Smith trade exemplifies how familiarity bias distorts player evaluation. Carroll thought he understood Smith because he had coached him successfully in Seattle. But that success occurred in a specific context with specific supporting elements. Removing those contextual factors exposed limitations that had been masked by better circumstances.
Organizations must guard against familiarity bias by conducting independent evaluation even of players they know well. Just because a coach succeeded with a player in one environment does not mean that success will transfer to a different situation. Contextual factors like offensive line quality, scheme fit, supporting weapons, and the player’s age curve all affect performance in ways that coaching familiarity cannot overcome.
The financial commitment to Smith through 2028 represents a particularly costly mistake because it constrains future flexibility. The Raiders cannot simply walk away from the contract without significant dead money charges. They must either pay Smith to play poorly or pay him not to play at all. Neither option helps the rebuild.
This situation illustrates why veteran quarterback acquisitions rarely work for rebuilding teams. Rebuilds require patience and timeline alignment with player development. Aging veterans provide neither. They offer short-term competence in exchange for long-term flexibility. When the short-term competence fails to materialize, as happened with Smith, the organization loses on both ends.
The next coach will inherit this mess. He will have a quarterback under contract who cannot play at a starting level but costs too much to release. He will face pressure to draft a replacement but must decide how to develop that replacement while managing the current situation. These are the kinds of problems that organizations create for themselves through poor evaluation and impatient decision-making.
Smith deserves some sympathy in this situation. He signed in good faith to play for Pete Carroll, who vouched for him and brought him to Las Vegas. Now Carroll is gone, the team is terrible, and Smith’s reputation has taken a significant hit. At 35, he probably has limited opportunities to resurrect his career again. The Las Vegas experience may well end it.
But sympathy does not change the fundamental reality. The Raiders made an expensive mistake by trading for and paying a 34-year-old quarterback whose success was more circumstantial than sustainable. They doubled down on that mistake by building an offense around him rather than drafting a young alternative. Now they must pay the price in both financial terms and strategic constraints.
The lesson for other organizations is clear: do not confuse familiarity with transferable knowledge. Just because you coached a player successfully does not mean you understand how he will perform in different circumstances. Conduct rigorous independent evaluation. Account for aging curves. Consider contextual factors. And above all, resist the temptation to believe that past relationships guarantee future success.
Key Insights:
- Familiarity bias causes organizations to overestimate player performance in new contexts
- Quarterback aging curves accelerate after 34, making multi-year commitments risky
- Supporting cast quality and scheme fit explain more variance in quarterback performance than coaching relationships
- Financial commitments to aging veterans constrain organizational flexibility when performance declines
- Rebuilding teams should prioritize long-term quarterback development over short-term veteran competence
