Geno In Context

Geno Smith played some flavor of well on Sunday. To some, it was a fantastic performance.  To others he did well, but not great.  To others, just reasonably well, a mixed bag, with some cause for concern.  But for nearly everybody it was some flavor or other of Geno played well.  So where does Sunday's performance fit in the somewhat limited historical record we currently have of Geno Smith?  To provide some relevant context, let's look at some comparable performances.  First we'll look at how Geno has performed at home.  Then we'll look at how Geno has performed with the running game (other than Geno's running) giving him a good performance (as measured by 120 yards or more for non-QB carries). Finally, we'll look at Sunday's performance and how it stacked up against what is thus far the gold standard of Geno's short career, the game against the Atlanta Falcons in 2013.

Home Games

Geno Smith has been been a bit up and down in home games thus far.  Sunday's performance is the best performance Geno has had at home in terms of both completion % and passer rating.  However, the passer rating fits fairly comfortably in with Geno's performances in Games 3, 13 and 15 of the 2013 season, against the Bills, Raiders and Browns, respectively.  Geno's yards per attempt on Sunday ranks 3rd out of 9 home games, his rushing yards rank 4th of 9.  In his 9 home games Geno has amassed a record of 7-2.  All in all, while Geno did well on Sunday, it does not appear to be any better than much of his prior work at home.  Looking at last year's Raiders game, by the numbers Geno's performance this year against the same team looks quite similar.  221 yards passing this year, 219 last year.  7.9 yards per attempt this year, 8.8 last year.  96.6 rating this year, 88.6 last year.  38 yards rushing this year, 50 last year.  2 turnovers and 1 TD pass this year, 1 turnover and 1 TD pass last year.  The one big discrepancy is in the completion percentage, 82% compared to 64%.

Reasonable people can differ on this, but the numbers indicate the first game of the year, against Tampa Bay, may have been every bit as good as, or even better than, Sunday's performance.  Certainly the passer rating was significantly lower in the Tampa Bay game.  But it should also be noted the Geno was asked to carry the load on a completely different scale in the Tampa Bay game than in any other home game.  Consider the yardage in the Tampa game.  Geno, between his running and his passing, accounted for a Herculean 303 out of the Jets' 347 total yards of offense.  He also engineered a game winning drive as time expired, albeit with the help of a really dumb Tampa Bay penalty.  Compare that to Sunday, when the Jets never trailed in the last 34 minutes of the game, and Geno only accounted for 259 out of 433 total yards of offense.   The running game against Tampa Bay was completely stifled, while the running game in Oakland was as good as it's been in the Smith era.  Yet Geno managed to put up more passing yards, more rushing yards, only one less point, and a game winning drive against Tampa Bay. It's debatable, but for my money the Tampa Bay game was better than Sunday's Geno performance.

As a side note, the 4 game stretch when the Jets were without Holmes and Kerley (counting the New Orleans game where Kerley was injured fairly early on) occurred in Games 9 through 12 of the 2013 season.  It is perhaps interesting to note that those are the only home games where Geno failed to surpass 199 yards passing, and two of only three home games where Geno failed to toss a TD pass.